


Those Left Behind

by MarshmallowNerd



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Author is Pissed About Recent Characterizations, Canonical Character Death, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Pre-The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (TV), Pre-WandaVision, Protective Bucky Barnes, Protective Sam Wilson, Team as Family, Wanda Maximoff is Tired
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-16
Updated: 2021-02-16
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29483694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarshmallowNerd/pseuds/MarshmallowNerd
Summary: In the wake of Steve Rogers's departure from the Avengers, it's left up to his three closest friends to pick up the pieces of each other left behind in the Captain America legacy.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Sam Wilson, James "Bucky" Barnes & Wanda Maximoff, Wanda Maximoff & Sam Wilson
Comments: 3
Kudos: 55





	Those Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> This piece is intended to be part one to a two-parter story. Those Starting Over Again is still in the works, so keep an eye out if you enjoy part one! Best wishes, and hope you enjoy ❤️❤️

Sometimes, Wanda really missed Steve.

Of course, she missed everyone they’d lost. Even Tony, despite how she felt neither of them had fully shaken off the begrudgingness of their alliance while he was alive. But most of all, she missed Steve and Nat. They had done the most to make her feel at home amongst the Avengers, training and even living with her at the compound before they’d all gone underground due to the passing of the Sokovia Accords. And she was rapidly learning that they had also been taking the most hits from the public about the functionality of the team. Wanda had never quite realized how endless the world of Public Relations was until she was put directly in the line of fire.

It started with a phone call. A phone call from someone who introduced themselves as an official representative for some big wig or another that worked in the United States government. 

For one thing, she didn’t know how such a figure had gotten a hold of her personal phone line when she had returned to a life of hiding after Tony Stark’s funeral. She had even continued dyeing her hair to maintain the unassuming American cover she had used while the Avengers were operating in secret. 

For another thing, the phone call wasn’t even for her. They were asking for Sam.

Perhaps a wiser choice would have been to simply hang up right away. But with the team split up the way it was after losing Steve, Nat, _and_ Tony, a part of Wanda wanted to know what had (or was about to) become of a fellow Avenger. 

“Who’s asking?” she demanded.

That only triggered a long-winded spiel that could have been boiled down to ‘we know he intends to be Captain America in Steve Rogers’s place, and we would like to have a proper hissy fit over this continued, glorified vigilantism.’ 

“As a member of the former team, Miss Maximoff, would you be interested in helping us oversee the actions of Mr. Wilson and, if he’s located, Mr. Barnes, as well?”

Wanda could feel herself bristling from the use of ‘former team’ alone. Just because the Avengers were in a rocky place following the loss of some of their core members, it didn’t mean they were all gone. After everything they had seen in the process of losing said teammates, who were these people to assume they would just leave the Earth defenseless against other potential threats?

Not to mention, she knew what was really being asked of her. They wanted a _babysitter_ for two fully-grown, competent men. Someone to talk Sam and Barnes into obedience because the government didn’t trust them to follow it’s agenda on their own. There were many things that bothered her about that, but most prominent among them was the fact that she was no one’s babysitter.

God, she missed having Steve around to tell off these clowns.

“ _No,_ ” was her firm answer before she finally hung up.

* * *

Two days later, Wanda received another phone call. Her phone so rarely received anything, so her first inclination was to dismiss it as another recruitment attempt from whoever had called her before. 

And yet, another part of her filled her was immediately flooded with guilt at the mere prospect of ignoring a call on her personal line when it could have just as easily been Clint or Tony’s widow, Pepper, calling in merely to check on her. She hadn’t heard from either of them since Tony’s funeral, but she knew they had expressed concern for her being effectively homeless after the Avengers’ Facility was destroyed in their most recent battle.

It turned out to be none of those she had suspected. It was Sam.

“Hey. I’m sorry to bother you,” he apologized in earnest, “but did someone call you, asking about me and Barnes?”

“Yeah.” 

“Aw, hell. I’m sorry about that. I had a feeling they were gonna try to find us through other members of the team. But I didn’t think it would go as far as you.”

“It’s…fine,” she said awkwardly, not really knowing what else to say. 

“We’ll try to keep you out of it as much as we can. I just got caught up in…” He sighed tiredly. “…this whole thing with Barnes, and now we’re both kind of playing everything by ear. You know how it is, that kind of unofficial mission stuff.”

“Yeah.” She remembered. She had gone on a few rogue missions with Steve and Natasha while they were all on the run together after the Accords’ passing. 

“I think Barnes getting involved makes them all anxious,” Sam went on, sounding like he was simply thinking out loud for a moment. “If you happen to hear from him next, would you be willing to let me know? Just so I can head his way?”

That took her by surprise. “You lost him?”

“I didn’t—” He sighed shortly, and it made her wonder if she wasn’t the first to ask him this. “I did not _lose_ him. He is a grown-ass man. He seemed to need some time after what happened with Steve, so I left him to it, and then just kinda…well…didn’t keep track of where he went.”

That sounded exactly like losing him. Though, Wanda knew better than to voice that when Sam already sounded annoyed with the situation. To her knowledge, the alliance between Sam and Barnes was tentative at best, having only been forged from a shared friendship with Steve. Now, that foundation was gone, and she didn’t know how exactly they were faring with just each other to work with for…whatever the hell they were going to do in Steve’s stead.

“How long has he been gone?” Wanda asked instead. Because while she also only really knew the two soldiers through a friendship she had formed with Steve, a part of her did care about them as fellow members of the Avengers’ team. And she remembered the constant dangers and risks of arrest that came with the life of rogue missions.

“About a week, I think. He hung around those first couple days after Stark’s service, but then after Steve…”

Sam drowned out the rest of the thought with a sigh. Wanda knew what he meant, though. 

_Steve left._

A week was longer than Wanda had expected Barnes to be gone with no one keeping track of him. Again, she had firsthand experience with the stresses of living as a secret Avenger. She figured the risks that came with it had to be significantly higher for him, given that he’d technically been a wanted man for decades longer than any of them. Granted, that also meant he was more well-versed in that way of life, but still. He was still capable of making mistakes, especially when he wasn’t in the best headspace after being snapped out of existence and then coming back only to lose his closest friend within the span of just a few days. If the federal authorities got ahold of him while in a compromised mental state… 

_No._ She stopped herself before she could think any deeper. This wasn’t her life anymore. And she wasn’t these boys’ keeper. She had only been asked one thing, and that was all she needed to do.

“I’ll see if I hear anything,” she promised. “And if I do, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Great. Thanks,” Sam replied. “And, hey, I am sorry if anyone else tries to pull you into anything because of us.”

“Don’t worry. I know it’s not your fault.”

“Yeah, well…just play it safe out there, OK?”

“Yeah.”

And that was the last of that phone call. 

Wanda’s first inclination was to leave things at that, and resume what she had been doing for weeks until then: squatting in various hotels, only moving on when she suspected someone had recognized her. Merely drifting, trying to come to terms with how she had lost _everything._ Or at least distance herself from all that she’d once known. Both physically and mentally.

But then, as the day wore on, she found herself repeatedly thinking back to Sam and Barnes. Wondering what kind of danger they were in by continuing the Captain America legacy without Steve. And without federal approval, either. They weren’t her responsibility, but they _had_ been her teammates. In a way, they had even been friends, even if only through their connection to another, mutual friend. 

And she could practically hear said mutual friend haunting the back of her mind, insisting she do what she knew to be right in that infamously self-righteous voice of his.

“Damn,” she hissed, and then went to begin her search.

* * *

It took a whole other day of investigating to figure out where Barnes could have gone. Wanda had to utilize just about everything she had learned from Natasha about gathering intel, as well as use some of her own tricks she had picked up on reading people from when she was more liberal about directly reading minds. A few news articles and some recollections of stories from Steve later, she had a rough idea of where to start physically looking for him. Then, it was just a question of getting there when she was still out in the middle of nowhere, in one of the little towns surrounding Stark’s family’s home. 

It was all a tricky matter, to say the least. But, with her past experience travelling undercover and a few careful uses of her scarlet on the right people, she managed to catch a commercial flight out to Washington DC. 

From what she could gather based on news sightings of him (or alleged sightings, at least) and Sam’s own words of Barnes needing to recuperate from his loss, Wanda’s first thought was that he would be at the two Hydra bases in that area (that she knew of, that is, having overheard things from the supervisors during her time with them). The underground spaces were unsettling, but at least abandoned now, so it’s not like she encountered any trouble rifling through them in search of the former Winter Soldier. When there wasn’t any sign of him there, she went to the Smithsonian museum to wait. If he didn’t show up there, she would find somewhere to stay the night and start all over. 

As it turned out, though, she didn’t need to wait. As she wandered the Captain America exhibit, she saw a vaguely familiar figure tucked away in a far corner, on a bench outside a miniature theatre that was showing a loop of videos interviewing the woman from Steve’s compass. He was dressed in dark winter wear and a ratty baseball cap, nearly blending into the black wall behind him. 

There was something lonely in the way he sat off to the side, at a distance from everyone else. Yet he, himself, didn’t seem all that sad. There was something more…conflicted in his face than that, and in the way his gloved hands were fiddling with each other (and if you knew to look, distinctly tracing the concealed metal plates of his left). 

She approached him uncertainly. Again, they did know each other, but only through events brought together by a mutual friend. There was a question of how he would take this, her being here for the purpose of leading him back to Sam, when that social buffer was gone. Especially given what she knew other people _usually_ thought of her. 

She had grown used to the fear of her powers for their potential for destruction. But she had a fear, herself, that Barnes in particular would resent the mere idea of her telepathy, given his experiences with unwanted influences in his head. So, she kept a respectful distance as she settled on the bench next to him, just close enough that they would be the only ones within each other’s earshot, but also with a foot or two of space between them. He tensed when she first sat down beside him, but some of that eased as he actually looked at her, and seemed to recognize her despite her relaxed, non-battle clothing (hand-me-down pants and a sweater from Stark’s widow, Pepper, since her own belongings had been destroyed with the Avengers’ Facility). 

Before she could even think of how to explain what she was doing there, he said lowly, “I know you.”

“Yeah,” was her simple reply as she kept an eye on the various museum patrons around them rather than meeting his gaze, concentrated as it was on her. “From Steve’s team.”

“Yeah. You saved my life at the airport.”

It took her a few beats to realize what he was referring to (and she refused to read his mind for a better understanding; she didn’t do that without permission anymore, least of all to someone with his history of mind control). Then she recalled the airport in Leipzig, where she supposed she and Barnes had technically first met years ago. The fight that had broken out amongst her team there, and how she had hung back to avoid hurting any of them. How that had led her to notice Barnes on the outskirts of the scene, about to have his throat slashed out by the Black Panther’s claws. She’d easily tossed the Wakandan king away from him with her scarlet. It had been such a quick, adrenaline-powered moment, that she was surprised he remembered it. 

“Oh, yeah,” she whispered when it occurred to her. “Right, yes. God, that…that all feels like so long ago, I nearly forgot all about it.”

“Mmm,” Barnes hummed, his fingers going back to their restless picking at each other through his leather gloves. “I wish I could.” 

He cleared his throat, and she could hear a rapid clicking at the very surface of his mind (the only part she could always inherently hear in others), as though he was second-guessing whether to finish his next thought. “I, um…I’m sorry about all that happened back then.”

“Don’t be. I knew what I was getting into.” She caught herself as her tone started to turn defensive. She truly didn’t blame him for the airport incident. At least, not entirely. She knew he hadn’t wanted to start any of what happened in Leipzig, even though the fight _was_ over him, for the sake of either apprehending him or helping him and Steve get to Siberia to stop other Winter Soldiers like him. 

Yet, it had ended so horribly for her, getting sent to the Raft prison after helping only him and Steve escape, it wasn’t something she enjoyed revisiting. 

Clearing her throat, Wanda emptied her tone of any feeling and changed the subject with a simple statement of, “Sam’s been looking for you. Told me he’s worried about you getting caught.”

“He shouldn’t be. I know what I’m getting into.”

Wanda nearly smirked as she heard an echo of her own words in his.

“Did he tell you to come find me?”

Wanda finally met his eye so that he could see she was being truthful. “No. He just said to let him know if I heard anything from you. Or _about_ you, I suppose. But he doesn’t know I’m here.”

With any hope, no one knew where she was. Until now, her only goal had been to disappear from public-consciousness altogether. Maybe even pretend with herself for a little while that she didn’t exist in this life anymore, but rather found something else, a life purely of her own design. 

Now Barnes was the one looking at anyone but her, his right-hand fingers moving a little quicker in their anxious tracing of the plates in his left. She could hear the surface of his mind ticking again, uncertainty curbing his every thought before he even tried to speak on it. Whether he was nervous because he was afraid of her powers, or because he simply didn’t want to offend her with his next question, she couldn’t tell from reading his facial expressions alone. “Why, um…why did you come here, then?”

Wanda half-shrugged in nonchalance. A part of her was still figuring that out, herself. “Who knows. Maybe hearing Sam actually worried about something got to me. And I remember how he and the others got whenever I was the one going off on my own between rogue missions, so…”

She trailed off, not really sure where she was going with that. Or perhaps she had become genuinely distracted this time with the displays around them. So much of her former Captain’s face was everywhere in this otherwise dark, crowded room. It hadn’t been that long since she’d seen that face in person. Maybe…two weeks had gone by since Stark’s funeral (even though she and Steve hadn’t really gotten a chance to really sit and actually _be_ _there_ with each other then). And yet, it felt like so much longer—years, even—had passed since then. 

She supposed, in a way, it _had_ been that long. She had just temporarily ceased to exist for part of it.

“It’s strange,” she heard herself muse out loud, “not seeing him around anymore. The _real_ him, I mean.”

Barnes only shifted oddly, his gaze immediately going to the floor. After a few heartbeats passed with him just tapping his foot, and Wanda watching him in careful silence, he filled in the empty space between them with, “Were you close with him?”

“Not as much as you,” Wanda said softly, even though she knew that wasn’t saying much. There probably wasn’t anyone as close to Steve as Barnes was. 

For that reason, she knew there was no point in asking if he missed the Captain. So, she asked instead, “What brought _you_ here?”

He mused for a second. Then, softly, “…I know Sam’s been asking about me. After Steve gave him the shield…well, we all knew he was ready for it, but I just…he was ready to get _right back_ into it—right where Steve left off. But apparently, he wants me there to cover him, too, and…”

He paused for a long moment, simply staring off into space. Inadvertently meeting the impersonal gaze of a holographic version of his oldest friend.

“I know he would’ve wanted me to,” Barnes murmured. And with it, Wanda could hear everything she had been feeling, herself, in regards to losing Steve. A strange obligation to follow through on what he would have wanted for them; a life there, on the team still. She knew it had always been with well intentions, with knowing that having enhancements made people instinctively view them differently, and he wanted to show that those differences didn’t change their capacity for goodness. 

But she also knew what it was like to not want to have to prove one’s self. To not want an obligation to the Avengers just because they were different. Especially after everything they had already endured. After already being _dead_ for _five years_ because of their Avengers’ duties. 

Wanda found herself falling into a slight daze as she dove deeper into thought. She didn’t realize just how absorbed she had become in those thoughts until one of them slipped out. 

“If he really wanted anything of us, then he should’ve stayed.”

She could see in his peripheral that he was taken aback by that. At least, enough so to break his trance and shift his gaze back to her. 

She had surprised herself, too, honestly. Not so much with her words, but more so from how bitter they had sounded. Again, she knew Steve meant well, and in leaving, was just thinking of getting something good for himself to have for once, but still. The way he had done it had only left them here, drifting without any of the team’s leaders. 

“I get _why_ he left,” she explained simply. “But that doesn’t make anything easier. So, it’s understandable if you don’t want this life that you followed him into.” 

She nodded at a display they both knew was standing on the other side of the crowd, detailing the life of James Buchanan Barnes, and the role he’d played in so many of Captain America’s successes back during the war. 

“All Sam wants is to know where you’ve gone, and if you’re alright. You don’t owe Captain America anything more than that. Not either of them.”

There was a beat of silence as he processed that. She could hear something ticking rhythmically at the surface of his mind. Not quite rejecting her words, but rather, convincing himself to accept them. To accept that not only did she have a point, but that he needed to actually exercise what she was offering. A reminder that there was a life away from this, and it wouldn’t take much to tell Sam.

However, it was his turn to surprise her. “I…I do want to go back, though. Just…at my own pace, you know?”

His tone still sounded conflicted over whether it’s what he truly wanted. But Wanda wasn’t about to debate it with him. She certainly didn’t know him well enough to contend whether or not she knew him better than he knew himself. So, she simply offered an impassive, “Sure.”

“I do,” he insisted. “I think it’ll do good to…I don’t know, I guess…find some sort of closure. If not with Steve, then…maybe with him.”

Wanda followed his gaze as it went to the other side of the exhibit. To the display about himself. Or at least, the old version of himself. James Barnes. The man that lived before the Winter Soldier. The one not weighed down by the history that the Soldier had wrought. 

From what little she knew of him already, he already seemed well on his way closer to that. Maybe not entirely the old Bucky that Steve knew, but definitely further from the Winter Soldier. 

_James._ She thought it suited him.

Not that what she thought really mattered. She didn’t intend to see much of him after this. 

“Well, I think that’s understandable,” she said for the time being, bringing herself to her feet. “And I’m sure Sam will see it that way, too. Just as long as you tell him _something._ ”

“Yeah, I guess he would.” Barnes agreed softly, looking down again, as if ashamed to have needed someone else to point out something so obvious. Or to at least affirm it for him. 

Just as she was about to turn to leave, he added, “Thanks for this. You didn’t have to come by.”

“I know,” Wanda replied, still in a simple tone. “But you’re welcome.” 

Then, as she finally did leave him to his own devices again, she said more sternly, “Now, go call Sam.”

* * *

Wanda stayed in DC after that. Mostly because there wasn’t really anywhere else for her to go. With the Avengers team scattered to regather their bearings from the past five years (mere days, to some of them) in their own ways, and the government still in a rocky place about letting them continue operations, there was no big hurry to reconstruct the Avengers’ Facility. So, she continued living as she had been on her own. 

Or at least trying to.

Not even a week after sending Bucky off to find Sam, she got another call. And when receiving it at three in the morning, she had a sneaking suspicion as to who it was before even touching her StarkPhone. She tried to ignore it (again, trying to convince herself that she was done with the superhero life) but after two more tries, it seemed like something important had to be going on.

“What?” she demanded bluntly.

“OK, this time, I lost him.”

That made her sit up in bed. “What?”

Sam’s tone was clipped, leering close to frenzied worry. “I don’t know what happened. We were investigating one of the old Hydra bases, and some goons showed up—though God knows what happened to them, because police showed up when they started making a scene. And so, we had to make a run for it, ‘cause—well, you know, _rogue_ missions—and I was about two, maybe three blocks away before I realized he wasn’t on the bike with me. I don’t know if he went the other way—or hell, if his dumb ass just fell off the fucking thing when I—”

“Sam, Sam, Sam…” _God,_ it was too late in the night for this. “Just slow down.”

“I don’t know where the hell he went,” Sam went on, not listening to her at all. “Whatever you did to find him before, I’m gonna need you to do it again. Because if his dumb ass goes down, I just know I’ll be going down, too.”

“Sam—”

“‘It’s a packaged deal, Sam,’” the former airman went on, now sounding annoyed above all else. “‘He who inherits the shield also inherits Bucky,’ or whatever the hell he said. Here, I thought Steve was being dramatic as always, but no—that asshole of his really does—”

“Sam—Sam!” Wanda cut in, raising her voice above his just to be heard above the furious rambling. “OK, alright. I’ll go find him.”

He sighed his relief. “God, thank you. _Thank you._ OK…”

He proceeded to explain to her what they had been doing, and where he had last seen Bucky while Wanda stumbled around her motel room, still partly drowsy as she went through the motions of getting dressed. This time she grabbed some baggy wear donated to her from Laura Barton. They were from what the other woman deemed her “baby-weight days,” so the sweatshirt and pants were pretty big on Wanda. But at three in the morning, she didn’t care at all how she appeared. She just knew she had to find the Winter Soldier one more time, and once she did, this life would finally be behind her for good.

* * *

Fortunately, the two soldiers were still in DC, so she didn’t have to travel too far this time. She caught the last bus that was running downtown (and may or may not have used her powers to convince the driver to do another run to guarantee her a ride back to her motel). From there, she wandered on foot towards the site Sam and Bucky had been investigating. The area had thankfully cleared of any activity, aside from an occasional police car driving past, so it was a fairly straightforward path to where she was going.

The ironic thing was, she found him in one of the old Hydra bases there in DC, where she had first gone looking for him that day they spoke at the Smithsonian. To reach its heart in a vault at the bottom of the bank building it was in, one had to know firsthand the way Hydra usually designed these things. Which Wanda did, in probably the only good thing to come out of her time with them. 

She found him at the very back of the vault. The lock on the barred metal door had been broken off, making for an easy passage into the final room where he was. It was a large space enclosed by deposit boxes of various sizes, and seemed even bigger right now, having been emptied of whatever had once been there. Or rather, whatever Bucky was still seeing in his mind. 

Of course, she didn’t actually go into his mind to see what he was thinking. But she did recognize the sight of someone frozen in their place, staring listlessly at a particular, seemingly insignificant space. He didn’t even react when she arrived, purposefully making her presence known by letting the door clang noisily back into place behind her. 

“James?” she prompted tentatively. She waited until he tilted his head towards the sound of her voice before even daring to step closer. However, once she did draw nearer, he turned to actually face her, his features softening as he recognized her. 

“Hi,” he greeted quietly as she came to stand directly beside him. 

“Hey,” Wanda returned, relaxing now that she could see that he was alright. “Are you OK?”

“Yeah.” 

Wanda wasn’t convinced by the dismissiveness of his tone. “You sure?”

“Mh-hmm.” He stole a brief glance at the wall he had been previously facing, but no trace of the mental disconnect of before returned. “I’m surprised by it, is all. I first ran down here just to get away from all the madness that broke out in the street. Old habits, I guess. But when I realized _how_ I knew this was here, I just…got curious, I guess. But I really am OK.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” His tiny nod seemed more confident, so Wanda felt more inclined to believe him this time. “Princess Shuri really knew what she was doing when she helped me out.”

“Mmm.”

A few seconds of contemplative silence went by. After a while, Bucky began his usual anxious fiddling with the plates of his metal hand. “Is everyone gone?”

“Yeah,” Wanda answered with a slight nod. “Even Sam. Although, he claims he thought you were with him when he first took off.”

Bucky snorted. “Sure, he did.”

Wanda didn’t have the energy to try convincing him Sam’s words had been sincere. Instead, she gestured with her hand for him to follow her as she started retreating back the way she had come. Her feet were dragging a bit now that the rush of anxiety over locating the former Winter Soldier was gone, and her previous drowsiness settled back in. 

“Where are we going?” Bucky asked as he followed behind her.

“Sam said it was best to lay low, apart from each other for a while. At least, until the authorities calm down. So, he continued heading over to wherever he intended to hide. Until he’s found a good place to meet back up again, you are coming with me.”

She heard his footsteps stop behind her. “I am?”

Wanda stopped as well, turning in place to see him genuinely surprised she would offer such a thing. Or perhaps that she would offer it to _him._

“Well, don’t be too impressed,” she said. “I am still just as homeless as you. I just have Mrs. Stark putting me up in some nice hotel rooms while I figure out my next steps. She gets a lot of good deals from her business trips, you know.”

“Yeah, I could see that…” 

Bucky went back to following her, his strides significantly shorter now as uncertainty held him back. Wanda was too sleep-deprived to be concerned about putting his self-consciousness at ease. She merely continued on her way, having faith that he would eventually follow her as normal once he remembered he had nowhere else to hide at the moment. 

“Come on,” she encouraged, hearing rather than seeing when he did pick up his pace. “If I don’t get to go back to bed soon enough, I just might change my mind about helping you both.”

* * *

Living with Bucky was…different. 

That isn’t to say it was bad. He was well-versed in life as a national fugitive (even more so than Wanda was), so he was smart about not being seen outside the shelter of their room. 

It was just different. Wanda was constantly hyper-aware of his presence in the room with her, this friend of a friend that she barely knew. He was like a ghost, simply existing there quietly, just as awkward with the situation as her, even though he made very little trouble. The most inconvenience he provided was requiring extra food and clothing to be gathered. And occasionally stealing her hair ties. 

She did catch herself constantly monitoring whether he was comfortable, as well as whether anyone else at the hotel had recognized not just her, but both of them now. And the stress of that constant surveillance was starting to get to her. Not to mention, it also meant that weeks had passed since hearing anything from Sam. When they had spoken last, he had made it sound like he would give things just a few days to settle down before getting back to her. Certainly not an entire week. Let alone two. 

When they reached the start of a third week, Wanda started to take initiative and reach out to him first. Every hour, on the hour, she would call. He didn’t answer, but it never once dissuaded her. Frustrated her, and worried her, yes, but it did not dissuade her. 

“Damn,” Wanda grumbled as her umpteenth attempt yielded yet another dropped call. 

“Still nothing from Sam?” Bucky asked from the other side of the room, where he was emerging from the bathroom, freshly showered and dressed in the same combat uniform she had found him in weeks ago. 

“Nothing,” she affirmed distractedly, turning the phone in her fingers. “That ass.”

“Yeah, he is,” Bucky agreed good-naturedly, settling onto the second bed in the room, which had become his bed during his stay. “But I’m not too worried. I’ve been keeping up with the news, and there hasn’t been any mention of him, or even the other Avengers. So, we at least know he’s still managed to lay low.”

“Yeah, that’s a relief…” Wanda replied, still partially distracted as she set her phone aside for good. 

“Yeah,” Bucky said, equally distracted as he stood up, heading for the desk on the other side of his bed. There, they had stored a collection of food they had slighted out of the hotel dining area. As he rifled through the collection of small, preserved snack packages, he added, “I feel like signals that far south are spotty as it is, even without relying on burner phones.”

It took Wanda a second to realize the implication behind what he was saying. But once it sunk in, she sat up as if struck by a stark chill. “Excuse me, what?”

Bucky tensed at her stiff tone, freezing in place in the middle of picking up a packet of pretzels. “What?”

“His signals _where_ are spotty?”

Bucky hesitated. She could hear the ticking of conflict at the surface of his mind. It wasn’t that of confusion as to what she was referring to, but rather, confusion from her reaction to it. “Down South. Where his mom’s old home is. That’s where he usually goes when he needs to lay low by himself. Or, well, that’s what he told me when we went there to regroup after Stark’s funeral.”

After a beat of silence as Wanda processed that, he tentatively went on, “You didn’t know?”

“No,” Wanda barked, more tersely than she intended to. “I didn’t. You think that’s where he went?”

“I’m pretty sure…”

Wanda didn’t need anymore from that. Not from someone as adept at reading people as a former assassin and international spy. And _certainly not_ when said spy had apparently already stayed with Sam there before. 

She pushed herself off the bed and began assembling what few supplies in the hotel room actually belonged to them. While she did, she readied a full travel plan with James from a single prompt. “How do we get there?”

* * *

Darlene Wilson’s old house was located in some bumfuck nowhere part of Louisiana. That isn’t to say it wasn’t nice; it was perfectly lovely, and well-secluded, located near the picturesque water of the gulf and spaced far from the next few properties, making it one of the nicest safe-houses Wanda had seen. 

If only she was in a better mood to appreciate it. 

She knew being the wanted fugitives that they were, it wasn’t likely Sam would answer the door for anyone he wasn’t expecting. At least, that’s what she told herself when she did the admittedly brash thing of letting her scarlet ram the front door open while she and Bucky were just reaching the front porch. The soldier tailed her in silence as she barged into the house’s foyer, calling out for Sam.

“What in the—” she heard from a nearby room.

Wanda followed the startled voice into the next room, where Sam was sitting alone at a large dining table, apparently just finishing some sort of breakfast from a small bowl in front of him. 

“What the—” Sam sputtered in confusion at seeing the witch stalking towards him, Bucky following diffidently after her. 

“Have you been here this whole time?” Wanda demanded.

Sam didn’t answer. Instead, he continued to press questions of his own. “How the hell did you find me?”

“I told her it was your family’s old place,” Bucky explained calmly. “We figured you would come here.”

“I thought you said you were going to tell us when you found a place to lay low,” Wanda said.

“I said—well, hey, now.” Sam stood up, as if to put himself on literally equal level with her. “I said I was going to ‘lay low.’ I never said anythin’ about—”

Wanda didn’t let him finish the thought. “You didn’t think to let us know you got out of there alright? Or that you’ve been alright all this time?”

“What—he knew!” Sam pointed an accusatory finger at Bucky. 

Bucky looked genuinely taken aback. “Did I? ‘Cause you just disappeared without a trace.”

“ _You_ disappeared! That’s why I had to call her!”

“And I found him,” Wanda threw in, forcing herself to sound calmer now (because _one_ of them had to be). “Did you not see the messages, or hear the voicemails, about how he was with me?”

“I…” Sam masked his pause by clearing his throat and crossing his arms over his broad chest. However, nothing could mask the rapid clicking Wanda’s telepathy could hear at the surface of his mind. Whatever excuse he was about to give, he was making it up just now. 

“I haven’t checked the burners recently. I’ve been caught up with the lead we got on the last mission.”

Something ticked loudly in Bucky’s mind. Not as in this was news to him, but rather, he knew the lead the other soldier was referring to, and it made him uncomfortable.

Wanda didn’t pay any mind to it right now. All she knew at the moment was that Sam had been doing his own investigations—possibly even full missions _by himself_ all this time. 

“You didn’t think to wait for your back-up to help you with that?” she asked, hearing rather than feeling her previous, incredulous ire return. 

“I’m fine,” he insisted stubbornly. With a slight nod in Bucky’s direction, he added, “He helped point me in the right direction. I don’t need anything else from him. I can take it from here all on my own just fine.”

Wanda stalked forward until she was directly in front of him, feeling some of her frustration beginning to manifest in heat at her fingertips. The familiar heat of her scarlet leaving her form, faintly crackling as small ribbons of it crept into being around each of her hands. 

However, despite the vibrant, tangible heat collecting at her fingers, her voice came out ominously cool. “Listen to me, you stiff-necked lummox. James has been staying with me all this time in a _public_ boarding place, making me lose my damned mind worrying about keeping not only myself protected from federal arrest or Hydra recapture, but another person as well. All after _you_ were the one to send me out to go get him for you—” 

Her face was growing heated now, an indication that scarlet was swarming her eye sockets, too, “And you’re not going to accept his help on the rest of an investigation you _both_ started because _one_ stupid mission went wrong?”

The next few heartbeats passed in pure silence. In that time, Wanda could feel her scarlet cooling down a little, gradually fizzling out into nothingness. Once it had, she could see that not only had Sam sunk back down into his chair, but the bowl and plastic cup he’d had with him for breakfast were hovering in the air at eye-level with him. As soon as she noticed them, they clattered noisily back onto the surface of the table. 

Sam, meanwhile, simply stared up at her with a round-eyed expression. As if he was remembering in that very moment that she was the same woman who had single-handedly faced down a mad titan with these very powers. And had very nearly _won_.

“No, he can help,” he said at last, his voice smaller and significantly more amiable in tone than it was before. “If he wants to.”

Wanda straightened her posture with a sharp breath, turning stiffly towards Bucky beside them. “James?”

Bucky started, looking surprised to have even been acknowledged after all of that. “Uh—yeah. Yeah, I’m ready to get back into it, if he’ll have me.”

She gave him a curt nod, half-turning back towards the front door with only one last fleeting glance at Sam. “Take the help. I don’t want to have to worry about either of you.”

With no other farewell, she turned the full way around back towards the exit, intent on leaving the two soldiers to their work without her. This time, for good. 

* * *

Once again, Wanda stayed at a hotel nearby, due to lack of having anywhere else to go. She stayed there even after several days passed without hearing anything more from the two soldiers. 

That silence led her to the realization that even if she and Bucky weren’t close, she had missed having _someone_ around for company. Eventually, she even found herself worrying that she’d been too hard on him and Sam, effectively scaring them from reaching out to her again as they continued whatever investigation they had started back in DC. 

On the other hand, though, she was relieved to be in her own devices again. She could feel herself hitting another low in her grieving process, made all the worse by it being the first time in weeks she was completely alone, wrapped up in her own mind. _And_ there was now the added stress of more people calling, asking things of her. It wasn’t anyone trying to find the other Avengers, so she didn’t know whether to consider it good or bad that they knew how to reach her. 

It was some organization that wanted her for… _something._ Truth be told, she didn’t always pay full attention to their pitch, for she was always distracted by how much they reminded her of SHIELD. She had learned her lesson about being recruited by such places when the SHIELD _she_ joined turned out to be a completely different side of the so-called “do-gooder” organization. So, she usually tuned out the recruiters’ voices until they assumed she’d hung up and left her alone. 

Still, their persistence was starting to get to her. After losing everything in just a few short years (including her own life for a while, there), was it too much to ask to let her just be? To let her cope, or at least dissociate from everything in peace?

These thoughts put her in a dour mood one evening in particular, when she heard her StarkPhone buzzing right as she was settling in for the night. She nearly threw the damn thing at a wall, having assumed it was another representative of SWORD, now willing to bother her after sundown about aiding their cause. However, the small device was only saved by the fact that the notification was of a call coming from a blocked caller. All others had left a number, in the event she changed her mind and wanted to return their calls (which was not likely, but still).

Of course, she was wary at first, well aware that it could be some sort of trap to find and apprehend her. Hence, her hostility when she answered. “What?” 

“Wanda?”

Her ire instantly cooled as she recognized that voice. Innocuous confusion took its place. “James?”

“Hey.” He chuckled nervously, though it was palpably strained. “You doing alright?”

She didn’t bother answering the question. She barely even registered it, for she was too focused on that strained, almost pained quality to his voice. “What’s happened?”

“It’s…a long story.” 

Bucky lowered his voice before continuing. “Something went wrong in our investigation. We tried calling someone else for help, but she’s not answering, so I thought we should try you—” 

His voice went even lower, nearly indecipherable as he mumbled, “Sam said not to, but I think it’s just ‘cause he’s afraid—”

Suddenly, Sam’s voice burst from somewhere in the background. “Hey! Give me that goddamned phone!”

Wanda heard some muffled scuffling sounds, as if they were actually fighting over the device. She felt so helpless just standing there listening, now that she had confirmation that they had fallen into some kind of trouble. 

“James,” she called, and then louder, more insistently, “James—James!”

Finally, Bucky’s voice returned, his words rushed as Sam presumably continued to bother him. “OK, look—look, we’re trapped in this building off of Route 10. Someone blew up the one next door, so our only way out is blocked, and we both got fucked up trying to escape already. So, we need reinforcements. I _swear_ , if any other way was possible, we wouldn’t have bothered you with this.”

Compared to the harassment Wanda had been recently facing from discount-SHIELD, she didn’t think of this as much of a bother. In fact, if they had both somehow injured themselves, she was glad they were reaching out to _someone_ for help. Despite constantly telling herself that the Avengers were still a team, even while scattered as they were, it had been a while since she’d actually been reminded of it. 

She knew what her old teammates would have wanted her to do. After all, Steve, and Natasha, and even Sam at the time, had come to her aid when things went south for her in Edinburgh, even though they hadn’t needed to. That was what they did for each other, as teammates. And that’s what she knew she should honor. 

“Where off Route 10?”

* * *

Wanda didn’t know how she managed to find a cab so late at night—granted, the driver was a rather surly one, at that—but she was grateful she had. She had the driver drop her off a good few blocks from where the soldiers actually were, and walked the rest of the way. By the time she actually reached the site, it was a quarter to one in the morning, and the backroads of Bumfuck Nowhere were eerily silent. 

It took everything in her not to have a bulb of her scarlet glowing in hand the whole while. If not for protection, then at least for better lighting than the sparsely placed road lights standing along the main road. However, occasionally a lone truck or two did drive past, so she had to refrain from drawing any attention to herself. 

Eventually, she found the construction campus where Bucky had said they were. Even in the dark, it was pretty easy to see where one of the half-completed building structures had collapsed onto a small warehouse right beside it. Wanda was slow to approach, wary of the fact that Bucky had mentioned someone had intentionally blown up the building, and they could still be hanging around. For those same reasons, she restrained herself from calling out to the missing soldiers, instead rifling around in the collapsed rubble until she could hear something. 

Her telepathy found them before she did. She could hear the wild buzzing of the surface of their minds, though she didn’t bother to look any deeper than that. Since her scarlet typically, innately picked up those surface-level emotions at every moment of every day, she could recognize what particular patterns belonged to each of them. 

She finally shed some of the psionic energy that had been simmering defensively in her blood for the past few blocks, making the release feel like a physical weight was being unloaded from her form. She limited herself to a few, frail wisps of scarlet for now, pushing aside slightly bigger pieces of rubble until she could confirm that it was indeed them that she’d found. 

Eventually, she heard a “Wanda?” from one of them. 

Shortly after, she could more clearly hear the other one call, “Kid?”

That was Sam. Only he and Steve ever called her that (and it irked her to no end, making her feel likened to a moody teenager). 

“James? Sam?” she called back, stretching up to look for them over a pile of pipes. 

The wall before her spat out a piece of plaster. She bent down on one knee, still holding bits of half-destroyed building overhead with her scarlet as she found Bucky’s eyes peeking out at her from the tiny opening he had just made. 

“Hey.” By the light of her scarlet overhead, she could see the former Winter Soldier offer a sheepish smile. “Sorry about this. Again.”

He shuffled aside, out of view, allowing Sam to take his place. “Yeah, thanks for coming out here, kid.”

“Are you hurt?” Wanda asked the both of them. 

“Well, Tin Man, here, smashed up his hand trying to get out,” Sam answered first.

Bucky was quick to add on, “Hey, it’s nothing compared to whatever he did to bust up his leg.”

“The important thing is,” Sam cut in before he could elaborate any further, “we’ve both had worse. All we need is a little help getting all this crap out’ve the way, and then we should be good to get out of your hair.”

Wanda hummed in disbelief at that. However, rather than speak on it, she simply directed them to stand back. She heard a scuffle of shoes retreating as they obeyed. Once they did, Wanda stood back up to tend to the debris sitting on top of them. 

She shed more sheets of scarlet from her form, waving her hands around her head a few times for good momentum before pushing upward. The tendrils of scarlet mirrored her movements, effectively coiling around the remaining debris and raising it into the air. She cast it aside before turning her attention to the small hole Bucky had made, ripping it into a larger size. With her powers, tearing apart the metal walls was as easy as ripping up paper. 

Once the opening was big enough, the two soldiers didn’t waste any time ducking through. Or at least, Bucky didn’t. He had to practically drag Sam through with him. Sam was clearly doing his best to stand on his own, though it came off as an awkward hobble, and with him reaching his free arm out to grab onto whatever he could to help support himself. 

Wanda helped them by using her scarlet once more to drag a few chunks of broken wall forward, making a small mound for them both to sit on and catch their breaths. 

“Hey, thanks again, Maximoff,” Sam said sincerely. Although, even in the dark, Wanda could see him rolling his leg, as if testing it. Wanda could also still hear the surface of his mind (now even clearer, with him and Bucky directly in front of her), and with it, a sharp crackling sound as the movement set off bouts of pain in his system. 

The surface of Bucky’s mind was similar, though less intense, and he was a lot less conspicuous about feeling along his metal arm, testing exactly which of the metal plates were damaged. 

“How bad is it?” Wanda asked after a few more seconds of watching them both take stock of their respective injuries. 

“Been better, but been worse, too,” Sam replied, to which Bucky distractedly agreed. “Don’t think any doctors need to get involved, so we’ll probably be good to take a better look on our own back at the house.”

He said it like there was really a choice in the matter. Being rogue Avengers and all, going to any sort of official medical clinic was…complicated, to put it simply. 

“Well…” Wanda paused for only a moment, to mentally weigh her words and ensure the two soldiers wouldn’t take it as continuing to be a bother to her. “The only cabs I could find at this hour were…testy, to say the least. I think I’d rather catch a ride back home with you two, if that’s alright.”

She could hear at the surface of their minds a light ticking. A sort of keeness towards the idea. Though, they shared an uncertain look with each other first, as if to ascertain the other was OK with it. 

“Yeah, that’s cool,” Sam said eventually. Then he gestured with his thumb at Bucky beside him. “But I can’t fly, so that means we’re all gonna have to squeeze onto the bike this one’s been working on.”

Bucky looked up at her, an apology laced into his tone. “How are you with high-speeds?”

Wanda bit back a scoff. “You two never met my brother, did you?”

* * *

Back at Sam’s family’s home, it was made clear that the damage to Bucky’s artificial arm was going to be an easy fix. At least, it would be easy to him, being as familiar with the metal arm’s inner workings as he was. 

The damage to Sam, on the other hand, wasn’t going to be as easy. And it was made no better by the fact that he was a difficult patient. 

Even from the kitchen, Wanda could hear him griping at Bucky, who had taken on tending to the airman’s bad leg in the den. From what they could gather, most of the current pain was from bruising all along his shin, and his smashed up knee. The latter was what Bucky had been patching up when Wanda left to get some ice for the rest of his leg, and the smattering of bruises there. 

“Don’t know why ‘ya gotta— _ow!_ ” Sam yelped as Wanda was making her way back to them with three ice bags squished between her hands. 

“Well, if you’d stop squirming…” Bucky grumbled back, which was the first instance where Wanda heard the frustration that had been smoldering at the surface of his mind slip out into the open. “You do realize I’ve only got one arm working at the moment, right?”

“Oh, and what, you left your eyes with your other arm, Mr. Magoo?” Sam shot back. 

Wanda returned to the den just in time to see Bucky tie the gauze around Sam’s knee with a deliberately harsh knot. 

Sam’s pained cry was near-deafening. “ _Gah!_ Why, you motherfu—!”

“Hey! Hey!” Wanda snapped as she saw Sam raise his own hand, surely to retaliate. “Will you knock it off?”

Bucky sat back on the leather footrest he was sitting on with an impatient huff. Sam smacked the other soldier’s good arm before doing the same, half-turning away from Bucky. 

“Well, he started it.” Sam pointed an accusatory finger at Bucky. “You saw what he just did, right?”

Wanda only rolled her eyes, carefully setting the bags of ice she’d gotten down on his bruised leg. Given that Sam was stretched out along the entire sofa, she set herself down on the coffee table, where there was more room for her. “I leave for what, two minutes, and you two can’t manage to be civil for that long?”

God, she truly was their babysitter.

She could hear the surface of Bucky’s mind rapidly clicking with the urge to defend himself. However, outwardly, all he offered was an annoyed grunt. 

“We’re perfectly civil,” Sam insisted, although the rather childish way he crossed his arms over his chest and sank back against the sofa cushion behind him indicated otherwise. “Apparently, old men just get cranky when they don’t get to bed early enough.”

“Oh, yeah, har har, I’m old,” Bucky retorted. “But what’s your excuse? You ran out of one-liners to throw at those guys?”

“Hey! It is not my fault things fell apart!” Sam snapped.

“What—and it’s mine? I asked if there was a plan before we went running—”

“Yeah, like your ideas would’ve been better. Steve warned me your idea of tactical planning was basically rush in and get captured.”

Bucky scowled, the faulty plates in his damaged prosthetic arm whirring lowly in agitation. “He better not have said that.”

“Hey—hey, hey!” Wanda smacked her hands together to be heard over the budding argument. “It doesn’t matter whose fault it was, what matters is you got out of there.”

“It wasn’t either of our faults,” Sam said, his voice suddenly devoid of his previous ire. He was still exasperated, yes, but now at least it seemed more rational. “We were in the clear when that random yahoo blew up that other building.”

“What—you saw them?” Bucky asked.

“Not a good look,” was Sam’s answer. “Just saw them running from the site, and then hitting a detonator. They had on some sort of mask, but it still didn’t look like our guy.”

“Your guy?” Wanda echoed curiously. 

She heard a tick of distress in Bucky’s mind, which was reflected in the way he ducked his gaze downward.

“Zemo,” Sam explained, pausing to sit up more, albeit with a pained groan. “That fake doctor who wanted to go after the other Winter Soldiers.”

“Or so we thought,” Bucky muttered bitterly. 

“Yeah. He escaped from Interpol prison a little while ago. We don’t know what he wants, but given the stunt he pulled last time, we don’t think it’s good to wait to find out.”

Now Wanda shared Bucky’s unease. She remembered what exactly the false doctor had done, particularly to him. She knew it had been the cause of their fight with their own teammates in Leipzig. The cause of her and Sam and the others being taken to the Raft prison, where she had been confined…with that _collar…_

She shuddered.

“It looks like we’re not the only ones who’ve been looking into it,” Bucky added a few beats later. “Judging by the run-ins we’ve had these last few times.”

“Few?” Wanda wondered. “You guys have gone on other missions?”

Both soldiers seemed confused by her question. 

“Well…” Bucky started. 

“Yeah,” Sam finished. “Mostly since we heard about the doc’s escape.”

“But the rest of the team…” Wanda trailed off for a moment, mentally asking herself who she was even referring to. Between the members that had so recently either passed away or retired from fieldwork, it was a question who could be considered official members of the team anymore. “Do you always go in just the two of you, like this? What if something goes wrong?”

Bucky shrugged nonchalantly. “So far, we’ve been able to figure things out.”

“These days, no one really picks up the phone anyways,” Sam added. “At least, not when we need ‘em to. And we know that doc and his new cronies certainly aren’t going to wait up for us to regroup with everyone else.”

Wanda could understand that. But that isn’t to say she liked it. 

“Well, they _are_ going to have to wait after a night as bad as this.” She stood up as if to emphasize her point, gesturing between Sam’s busted leg and Bucky’s metal hand, where the prosthetic hand was gingerly resting on his own leg. “Those aren’t going to be an instant fix. I don’t want either of you going out into another situation like that until I’ve seen a full recovery.”

It took a minute for her words to fully register with Sam. Once they had, he jerked forward to sit up, wincing a little as his bad leg seemed to protest the sudden movement. “What, wait—wait. ‘ _You_ ’ see a recovery?”

Wanda merely nodded. 

“No—well—hey,” Sam stuttered. “Kid, I can’t ask you to hang around here for us. I know you’ve got…”

He gestured vaguely to her overall form, likely waiting for her to fill in the blanks. Truth be told, there wasn’t much left of her own life to get back to. Simply staying wherever she could find a room, grieving her old life, and waiting for the next recruitment call from SWORD? Nothing she couldn’t do here, and at least have something productive to show for it by ensuring the two soldiers before her didn’t harm themselves any further. 

“I can manage my affairs here,” Wanda stated with a simple shrug. “I’ve stayed with James before, so I know I can trust him to be reasonable and pace himself. But I’ve heard things about you, Wilson. You’re too eager to get back out there and continue what you started, and that makes me think you can’t be trusted to let yourself heal first.”

“Well, now, hey—”

“I think she’s right.”

They both looked at Bucky at his quiet admittance. His own gaze met Sam’s as he went on with, “We’ve been pushing ourselves really hard lately, and I think it’s half the reason we were so unprepared when things took an unexpected turn today. If you don’t wanna believe that, then maybe having someone else around to keep an eye on how we’re doing will help out.”

Sam thought it over for a moment, the surface of his mind rhythmically clicking as he debated it further with himself. Eventually, he made a _tsk_ sound. “Well, OK. I’m not a monster. I’m not gonna turn you away if you want to stay, kid. But I know this kind of stuff can become…a lot—and it _is_ real soon after everything went down the last time we were all with Rogers. You sure you’re comfortable hanging around that? I mean, even from just tonight, I figured…you know, with collapsed the building and all…it might…”

He trailed off awkwardly, suddenly averting his gaze from her general vicinity. Wanda felt her brow furrowed in confusion. “What about it?”

“Well, it, um…it was gonna be an apartment building. And so, seeing it like that…”

Oh. _Oh_.

That’s what he’d been afraid of. Triggering her. She didn’t know Steve (or Nat, or Tony) had even disclosed that much of her past with him. Although in hindsight, she supposed it did make sense. They had all been living together at the compound for quite a while, so it was only fair to fill him in on everything they’d known about her back then. 

“I can handle it,” she told the airman. _I’ve_ been _handling it_ is what she meant. “It’s the two of you that we’re worrying about here.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam acquiesced with a heavy flop back against the arm of the sofa. “Well, I know when I’m outvoted. Of course, even without it, you’re welcome to stay, kid. Sarah—my sister—she’s still got some old college stuff in the closet in her old bedroom, upstairs. You’re welcome to any of the stuff there.”

“Thanks, Sam. And do you need any help getting up the stairs?”

“Nah, I’ll be fine. Worst case scenario, I’ll just sleep here. S’not like it would be the first time, anyways.”

Bucky grunted in response to that, rising to his feet with his flesh hand pressed gingerly to the seam of his prosthetic limb. “Well, sounds like you got it from here, Bird-Brain. I think I’ll—”

“James,” Wanda admonished.

“What?” he replied in false innocence.

Wanda decided to try a different approach, meeting his eye with a challenging glare. “If you don’t do it, I will.”

“Do what?”

Neither of them answered Sam’s query. Rather, Bucky only met Wanda’s stare with an annoyed tick of his jaw. In the end, though, the chivalrous upbringing he’d shared with Steve won him over just as she’d hoped it would. 

“No, I’ll get him,” the soldier said begrudgingly. 

“Get—wait, wait—hey!” 

Sam grunted in equal parts surprise, pain, and indignation as Bucky less-than-gracefully maneuvered him to sit up and stand, taking most of the airman’s weight from him as best he could with just one working arm. He all but dragged Sam with him across the den, towards the staircase on the other side. 

Wanda did help them as they passed by her, taking Sam’s other side as they began ascending the stairs. Between the two of them, Sam’s damaged leg barely even touched the steps (and perhaps Wanda was using her scarlet a little bit to help carry him). The whole way, both soldiers griped at each other over how unnecessary the other’s efforts were. Yet, at the same time, Wanda’s scarlet could hear that their bickering was insincere. No amount of bravado could hide from her telepathy’s ear, in which she could hear how much they were actually grateful to have teammates to count on again. 

* * *

The witch had a fitful sleep that night. It was typical for her, especially when she was sleeping in a new place for the first time and didn’t always remember where she was when she woke up at random intervals throughout the night. Her sleep was littered with unwanted memories of smoke and ash, of buildings crumbling, and alien creatures slashing at her with claws and spears. Of an unnatural yellow energy burning her from the inside out, stirring awake an equally unnatural scarlet from her form. 

Eventually, she sat up in bed, frustrated and miserable with her own mind. The sky outside her window was still dark, indicating she had only gotten a few hours of sleep. 

And from what her telepathy could sense, she wasn’t the only one. 

Even from across the hall, she could recognize the familiar ticks of perpetual solemnity and agitation from James Barnes. Though at the moment, she thought she could hear something a little more…frantic about it. 

Wanda slid out of bed, curiously padding out of her room and down the hall. She almost compulsively paused by the bedroom next to hers to check on Sam. He was still atop his own bed, his injured leg precariously propped up on a spare pillow just the way she and Bucky had left him. Her telepathy could hear the surface of his mind stirring quietly, in an exhausted, dreamless sleep. She took the liberty of shutting his partially ajar door closed all the way, on the off-chance she or Bucky woke him with whatever she was about to find was troubling Barnes. 

Bucky had taken the third bedroom, at the very end of the hall, directly opposite Wanda’s. However, it was light coming from the bathroom next to his room that Wanda was following. The door there was also partially ajar, although revealed less than Sam’s had at a cursory glance. She rapped lightly against it with two fingers as a way of announcing herself. After a few beats of no response, she gently tapped the door to open it further, just enough to poke her head through. 

“James?”

Her heart stalled in her chest. The first thing she saw was a pair of scissors in his metal hand—which she knew he had hastily tried to hastily repair himself while she went to bed—as he hunched over the sink, his shoulders trembling. He was in sweatpants and an undershirt, so she knew he had at least tried to get comfortable and rest since she had last seen him when they helped Sam into bed. Now, though, he was looking at her through the reflection in the mirror in purely frigid horror.

The longer she appraised him, the more he seemed physically alright. All that was amiss were pieces of his hair were now scattered on the floor around him. Thick, brunette waves that would have hung around his jaw had now been swept in a short, unruly path over his forehead. 

She jumped at the heavy clatter of the scissors falling into the marble sink.

“I’m sorry, I…I didn’t mean to…” He trailed off, leaving it unclear whether he was referring to scaring her with the noise, or for his dismal appearance, or for _what._

“It’s fine,” Wanda murmured, now overwhelmed with her closer proximity to the rapidfire noise of panic at the surface of his mind. Despite it, though, she stepped further into the room with him. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

“No, you didn’t,” he was quick to assure. “I just, um…I was—I woke up and I thought I saw, um…and then, I just…I wanted it gone. I wanted…I think I didn’t want to be _him_ anymore.”

“OK,” Wanda said simply. Hopefully he could see she genuinely understood where he was coming from. All too recently, she had seen another super-soldier trying to distance himself from his more infamous persona by changing his appearance. Of course, the solution then was to let his hair and beard grow out. Here, it was apparently the opposite. 

“Do you want any help?” she offered. “Just to even it out?”

He looked over his shoulder to more properly look at her, his expression now pinched in confusion, as if concerned he’d misheard her. “Do you…you mean you would do that?”

“Yeah. I used to do it for my brother all the time.”

“I…” He paused for a few beats, still seeming lost. Wanda didn’t mind it. Rather, she was relieved consideration over the choice at least seemed to ground him, pulling him from his previous state of a near panic attack. Then, he gave his answer in a small, tentative voice. “Would you?”

Wanda merely held her hand up in a gesture of ‘wait there.’ She stepped out of the room for a moment to perch carefully on the topmost step on the stairs. If she leaned over at the right angle, she could get a good view of the breakfast bar at the edge of the kitchen. A good view of her target was all she needed for her to cast out a branch of scarlet from her fingers, sending it down to grip onto one of the bar stools there with deceptively thin, psionic fingers. She pulled her arm back to her, effectively calling the scarlet back with its new find in tow. She gripped the leg of the stool with her physical fingers once it was close enough, carrying it back to the bathroom with her.

Bucky was waiting where she’d left him, now with the scissors back in his metal hand. She set the stool down behind him with a light pat on the seat. “Here. Get comfortable.”

He obediently sat back, broad shoulders hunched as if in shame for putting her in this position. She didn’t offer any placating nothings, but rather, carefully took the scissors from him to begin her work. “How much do you want gone?”

The soldier fiddled with his fingers, apparently unable to meet his own reflection’s eye in the mirror, let alone see the work he’d already done. “Just…all of it.”

She hummed in acknowledgement, mentally telling herself to start with the length she’d seen on his old self in the Smithsonian exhibit, and then see how he felt from there. He let her work without a word—barely even looked up to see how it was coming along—for several minutes. 

Once she’d made some progress evening out what he’d already started, he finally spoke up with a small, “Thanks.”

“It’s nothing,” the witch said easily. “In fact, you’re a lot more cooperative than Pietro ever was.”

She heard a click of curiosity at the surface of his mind. Although, it took another few moments for him to speak on it. “That’s your brother?”

“Yeah,” Wanda answered mindlessly, distancing herself from actual, conscious thought on the matter the way she usually did about Pietro. 

“Mmm. And…how’s he feel about you staying with a couple of strange men?”

Despite herself, Wanda laughed a little. “You’re not strange.” _Not compared to me,_ she thought. “You’re certainly not _strangers_ , if that’s what you meant. You’re Steve’s friends. And Sam, I even trained with him for a time, before the Accords were put into place.”

“Yeah, but…” She saw his metal fingers twitch, as if wanting to fidget some more. “I know, um…I already gave your team a lot of trouble in the past. And I know today, I made a direct call to you for help, but…damn, I don’t know. I just…don’t want you to feel obligated to be here just because it’s what Steve might’ve wanted.”

Wanda uttered a barely-there sigh. It would be a lie to say she hadn’t felt that way a couple of weeks ago, when Sam called her the first time he needed help locating Barnes. But now…

“That’s not why I’m staying,” she assured softly, meeting his gaze in the mirror before she re-busied herself with his hair. “Alright, maybe I felt that way a little at first, but now…well, now I know you myself. You and I already lived together for a couple of weeks, remember?”

“Yeah…I guess we did.”

“So, you know there’s not really anywhere else I _have_ to be. At least here, I can keep up with an old teammate. Make sure he’s doing alright while he works himself to death.”

Bucky’s posture remained stiff and guarded, but she could hear the activity at the surface of his mind lighten up as the subject switched to someone else. “Yeah. He has been doin’ a lot for this investigation. And whenever things go wrong, he’s been taking it pretty hard. I really do think it’ll be good for him to have someone else around here to remind him to take it easy. He just…always wants to keep going.” 

Wanda hummed, intrigued by that. From what she could remember, Sam was usually more reasonable about such things. He cared about the missions they had, yes, but he’d always recognized when they needed to pace themselves. Especially when they had to play things extra safely in those first few days after they had been deemed “rogue Avengers.” 

If anything, she always remembered Steve to be the one wanting to constantly keep going with his duties. To prove he still could. Who he wanted to prove himself to was beyond her, but still.

“It must be a Captain America thing,” she mused aloud.

“Maybe.”

There was a small lapse in the conversation then, broken only briefly as Wanda advised him to stay still while she cut more of the hair around his face. Occasionally, she took a moment to sweep up the fallen tufts with her scarlet, collecting it into a small pile on the corner of the sink to be properly disposed of later. Once she had made her way back behind his head to even out the shorter length, Bucky resumed the conversation, his voice still quiet and cautious, as if wary of asking something it wasn’t his place to know. “Do you miss him?”

Another little laugh escaped her. This time, it felt almost bitter. Not with him for asking, but more with herself. With the situation they were in now, that their mutual friend had left them to deal with without him.

“Of course I do. But,” she said around a tired sigh, “I understand why he left. I certainly know I would have liked to settle down and get away from this life if I had been at it for as long as he was.”

Hell, she _already_ wanted out of this life. So much fighting, and loss, and for little thanks…

“That doesn’t mean you can’t miss him.”

She sighed again at the soldier’s words. “No…I guess not.” 

Only a short beat of silence followed then, before he quickly added, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring this up now—”

“No, no, it’s fine,” she insisted just as quickly, mostly to put him more at ease. She even set the scissors down for a moment, at first to sweep some hair off of his flesh shoulder. Then she proceeded to keep her hand there in a gesture of comfort. An anchor _she_ needed as she suddenly let herself be more candid. “Really. I just…think it hurt, more than anything. Not getting to say goodbye before he went. Having to find out about it later.” 

Having to find out that _both_ of her mentors were gone. She hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye to Natasha, either.

Bucky merely blinked at their reflections in the mirror, letting the words sit out in the open for a moment. “I think he was worried it would’ve stopped him. You know, to be reminded just how many people he was leaving behind. And what it would mean to them.”

“Yeah,” Wanda agreed more sincerely this time. “I don’t hold it against him. It just…still hurts sometimes.”

“Yeah.” Barnes ducked his gaze back into his lap. “Even though _we_ got to see him one last time…it doesn’t make it feel much easier here and now.”

Her heart went out to him. She felt she should offer something worthwhile, considering her long experience with grief. She supposed he had just as much experience with that, if not even more given how old he was physically, but still. 

Nevertheless, all she gave in that moment was another mindless hum of acknowledgement. Then she went back to cutting his hair. 

“Alright,” she said as she set the scissors down on the counter. “That should do it.”

He sat up straighter as she swept pieces of hair off his shoulders, running his fingers through the thick tufts that remained on his head. For a moment, he betrayed no emotion to the sight of his new appearance. Even the surface of his mind was quiet, ticking quietly and steadily as he processed his reflection in front of him. 

“Damn…” he whispered eventually. “I look like him. The, um…the old me, I mean.”

“A little,” Wanda acquiesced, worry encircling her as she struggled to tell whether he saw that as a good or bad thing. “Is that OK? I can go shorter.”

“No, no, it’s great,” he said, finally meeting her eye to show he was being earnest. “Really. Thank you. Well…for everything tonight.”

Wanda only nodded briefly, still gauging whether he was truly satisfied enough to come down from whatever stupor she’d originally found him in. Since she didn’t want to be invasive by reading his mind, she asked him directly, “You going to be OK?”

“Yeah. Just might be up for a little while longer. I think I’ll shave, too.”

“You want any help?”

“No, I think I can handle it from here. But thank you.”

He sounded more grounded as he spoke, assuring her that he was truly alright enough for her to go. “Alright,” she replied, taking a step backward. “Then, I’m gonna turn back in.”

She was in the midst of turning in place before he said something more, something meant to be taken lightly. “You know, you never answered my question, by the way. About how your brother feels about all this.”

She froze in place, gripping the doorframe of the door perhaps a little too tightly. The matter of her twin brother was a wound she had endured for a few years now, but it was still one she could barely stand to reopen. Least of all now, when she had just properly acknowledged another wound for the first time. The wound left behind by Steve leaving. 

Upon taking a deep breath, she forced a nonchalant smile onto her face as she looked back at Bucky over her shoulder. “I think that’s a story for the next cut, yes?”

Evidently, he was perceptive enough to know there was more to the story than he’d initially believed. And that it wasn’t something worth pushing on. “OK. Yeah. I, um…I’ll be here then. Whenever you’re ready.”

Wanda nodded her appreciation. Then she padded back to her room, leaving him with just a shaky, “ _Do svidanya_.”

* * *

Surprisingly, Sam didn’t have much to say on Bucky’s new clean-shaven, short-haired look the next morning. 

That isn’t to say he didn’t have _anything_ to say. As soon as Bucky entered the kitchen that morning, with Wanda tailing right behind him, Sam sat up a little straighter in his seat at the breakfast table, staring at the other soldier with a glass of orange juice half-raised to his mouth. The scrutiny made Bucky halt in his tracks, forcing a tired Wanda to go around him to get into the kitchen, herself.

“Who the hell are you?” Sam demanded.

Wanda’s brow furrowed, her thumb pointing at Bucky in a silent question of whether Sam was truly asking that in regards to him. “It’s James.”

“That’s not a James,” Sam insisted, his gaze never once leaving Bucky. “That’s a Chad.”

Bucky rolled his eyes, grumbling something indecipherable to himself as he stalked past Sam. 

“Hey, where you going?” Sam pressed mockingly as Bucky crossed over to the other side of the room, rifling through the cabinets for something. “The frat house is the other way, Kyle.”

Bucky scowled as he finally grasped a mug from the cabinet, offering one to Wanda beside him. “God, I hate him,” he muttered under his breath as he did.

Wanda could hear at the surface of his mind a calm, casual ticking, so she knew he didn’t entirely mean that. Thus, she simply accepted the mug with an equally soft ‘thank you.’ However, as opposed to making tea as she’d originally intended to do, she stepped back towards Sam to remind him, “Be civil.”

“What? That was perfectly—” Sam jerked back in his seat, giving her an indignant look as he pointed an accusatory finger at her. “You said you don’t read minds anymore!”

“I don’t need to,” Wanda shot back evenly, lightly smacking his hand aside. “I know you well enough.”

“But I was just—”

Her free hand shot up in a warning gesture, her fingertips entangled with thin wisps of scarlet light. “Civil.”

“But he makes it so easy—”

The witch made a vague sound in warning. She couldn’t know for sure, but she was half-certain the ethereal glow of scarlet reached her eyes for a moment, too. With that, Sam sat back in his chair with a begrudging huff. Though, Wanda could hear at the surface of his mind that he sincerely intended to go easier on the other soldier. Especially in light of more important matters that they moved onto from there, such as getting a knee brace for Sam, and finding something to keep them both occupied until they were fit for their next endeavor. 

The further they deviated from the original topic of the morning, the more she could also hear something simmering at the surface of Bucky’s mind. A sort of growing, peaceful liking for the new change. And perhaps even anticipation for the new normal it signified for his life.

* * *

Keeping up with a pair of restless, constantly bickering soldiers had seemed like it would be a lot easier in theory. The first few days of actually doing it in practice, though…

None of it was ever in genuine malice; she could still hear that much at the surface of their minds. Only once did she hear Bucky’s mind alight with pure, seething irritation within her first few days there. It had been early in the morning, when Sam had first started getting sick of being stuck indoors, and snuck out around sunrise to practice his shooting. Bucky had come storming down the stairs after just a few shots, and from the looks of it, had already suffered another fitful night of sleep (he and Wanda both, though she hadn’t minded it as much, having already surrendered to the notion that sleep was evading her, and ventured downstairs to watch mindless reruns of American sitcoms in the living room). 

Bucky, on the other hand, had come down the stairs with a huffed, “What is he doing?”

Having misread the situation, Wanda’s answer had been, “He’s just practicing his shooting. He’s fine.”

“Is he?” Bucky had questioned with barely a fleeting glance at her as he stalked past the den to reach the front of the house. The door had barely swung open before he was shouting at Sam from across the ways, “Hey! _Hey!_ ”

The shooting had stopped for a moment, but before Sam could yell back a response, the former Winter Soldier had thrown back a challenge, “You missed! I’m right here!”

“James—!” Wanda had haphazardly thrown the television remote aside in her haste to get up and get him away from the door. Away from sight of the obviously armed soldier that had already been in a bitter mood from cabin-fever. 

She never found out if Sam had actually initiated the incident by deliberately shooting right by Bucky’s bedroom window, but at the moment, it didn’t matter. No matter what had occurred beforehand, Bucky was definitely testing the airman’s patience now. 

Bucky hadn’t paid her any mind, even going so far as to step out onto the porch to continue egging Sam on (and from what she could hear, Sam was yelling something indistinct back). “I’m right here! Go ahead—just _try_ and see if you can shoot—”

“ _James!_ James Buchanan Barnes, get your ass back—”

It was then, when she was halfway to him that she felt her scarlet flaring up in response to its host’s ire. She had channeled it towards the door, slamming it closed with swirling, smoke-like scarlet fingers at the same time her physical fingers latched onto the back of his undershirt and pulled him back inside. 

Wanda considered that morning to be the start to a chain of incessantly petty squabbles between the two. If one wasn’t sneaking magnets on the other’s arm, then the other was drinking the last of the bottled waters (or even the milk, on one occasion) while looking the former right in the eye. Or they were ‘showing each other up’ during workouts or some training session or another—Bucky already being more efficient with the Captain’s shield was a particularly heated topic—which offset an entirely separate ordeal, given that the entire point of Wanda staying there was to ensure they gave their respective injuries time to heal before engaging in something so physically trying. Granted, Bucky was healing quicker due to damage mostly being done to his prosthetic limb, and Sam was pacing himself well _enough_ with extraneous exercises, given his knee brace. But still. 

Wanda didn’t doubt that they’d already had some shade of this trivial rivalry before she came along. However, being forced to stay in the same house for days on end with little else to do had definitely heightened it. 

Not that getting them out of the house helped any. She tried that. 

They had needed groceries, and evidently, Sam’s family was well-liked enough in the nearby town for people to look the other way if they saw him and two friends milling about somewhere harmless, like at a grocery store. There, the two soldiers’ stir-craziness did abate some, reducing their interactions to occasional comments from Sam and reserved brooding from Bucky. If they argued over anything else while there, Wanda didn’t hear it. Although, that could have easily been a result of being in a public space, surrounded by the noise of so many other minds around them. 

It wasn’t until they were halfway through the store did Wanda realize she had lost one of them. It had been put upon Sam to choose what brands they got of everything (they were staying in _his_ family’s home, after all), so while he took an extra minute or so to decide on the type of chips to get, Wanda had begun looking around in boredom. To her dismay, she found Bucky was nowhere to be seen. She immediately tensed, her mind going to the worst places as it usually did, especially in regards to her internationally wanted teammates. 

Not wanting to raise alarm too soon, she had started with a simple question of, “Where’s James?”

Sam didn’t seem nearly as concerned, his furrowed brow still fixed on a bag in his hand. “Oh, he hung back a while ago when we were passing…” 

He gestured vaguely to the side of the store they had just come from, still without looking up. “Soaps and potions—I don’t know what the hell that section is. Say,” he turned the bag for her to see, “what do you suppose lavender chips taste like?”

Wanda’s answer had been a groan, swinging their cart around mid-aisle and grabbing the back of Sam’s jacket to tug him along with her, his bag of what turned out to be disgusting chips and all. 

“What? He’s fine!” Sam insisted. “Worst case scenario, he has to find his way back home on his own. He knows the way. It’ll be fine.”

“No, it’s not,” Wanda griped, for she’d had a suspicion something like this would occur when they were first leaving the house, and had used her scarlet to set some precautions in place. “I put your wallet in his pocket.”

“ _What?_ ”

Sam changed his tune then, genuinely keeping an eye out with her for their missing teammate. Between the two of them, it didn’t take long to spot him getting the milk they had forgotten about when they passed by the dairy section. 

“Almost two whole dollars just for milk?” he questioned as the other two approached, speaking as if they’d never left. “When the hell did this happen? Back in my day—”

“It can’t be helped,” Wanda interrupted before he could unwittingly fuel a new wave of old man jokes from Sam with that phrase. After tossing his selected milk into their cart and continuing back onto their original path, she added, “If worst comes to it, Mrs. Stark is willing to help us.”

Her response had been Bucky’s stammering as Sam less-than-gently manhandled him in his efforts to get his wallet back. 

* * *

Within her second week of staying with the two cabin-fevered soldiers, Wanda began to pick up on little tricks to keep them in good spirits—or at the very least patient—with each other. 

The key to it, she found, was to know when they needed to work together without realizing they were doing it, and when to keep them apart if one or both needed space. For instance, something she learned that day they came back from their grocery store outing was that one was bound to have comments on the other’s eating habits if left to their own devices, and potentially eat the other’s food. But when they shared a meal all together, they were more lenient. So, she started joining each one’s efforts to make dinner. With her helping one, the other usually joined in just to feel productive, leading to all three of them contributing to at least one meal per day for them to have altogether. It was partially therapeutic on her part, too, reawakening her fondness for cooking (because she would be damned if she put up with plain pasta and sauce, with some variation of a boiled side for so many days in a row).

She pulled something similar when they continued having differences during field training. Whenever one went out for practice doing whatever it was for that day, she would go out with them. Whether it be to help set up a punching bag in the barn, or setting up shooting targets around the trees, or merely to be on standby to quickly retrieve the Captain’s shield with her scarlet. If she was helping one, the other would eventually gravitate towards the action if he was feeling up to it. 

Of course, even those few moments of working together weren’t enough to completely smooth things over between them. They still bickered like an old married couple, and sometimes, Wanda could even sense when they needed time apart. Mostly during afternoons whenever Sam had to do physical therapy for his knee, which always ended with him frustrated at how slow his healing progress was coming along, or in early mornings after Bucky had a restless night’s sleep, leaving him on edge and easily irritated as whatever nightmare he’d previously had lingered in the corners of his mind. 

In those moments, the witch did her best to keep them separated, distracting one as best she could with requests for help cleaning something around the house. Only once did she make the mistake of asking help fixing something, and by the time Bucky joined in to help as well, a debate ensued over what pipe to use—or some other stupid matter—and long story short, none of them could use the garbage disposal anymore. 

In short, that second week was remarkably more balanced in terms of putting up with moments of argument and cooperation from her two temporary housemates. Which is why when they approached her together one morning while she was having her morning tea, she’d had no idea what to expect. 

Fortunately, Sam got straight to the point. “We got a hit.”

When a few heartbeats passed without any further elaboration, Wanda asked, “On what?”

“On that investigation we started way back when. There’s been some news reports about other folks with masks like the one I saw on that guy who bombed us that other night. They were spotted stirring up trouble in a little town over by Reno, in Nevada. Robocop thinks they’re headed for what used to be a hot spot for arms’ dealing in that area. If we leave soon enough, maybe we can intercept them. Or at the very least, find a fresh trail to follow before they blow up something else.”

From his place right beside the airman, Bucky muttered an additional comment of, “Both figuratively _and_ literally.”

“Alright,” Wanda remarked, solely to indicate she was listening. “And?”

“ _And_ , we know it’s still pretty soon since that last clusterfuck of a mission,” Sam continued, his tone slower now. More cautious. “But I’ve been keeping up with the physical therapy every day since then,” he gestured to himself, and then to Bucky beside him, “and all his gears have been in order lately—mentally and physically—so we were thinking we should be okayed to go.”

Wanda merely blinked up at them for a second, raising her mug of tea halfway to her mouth. “OK, then,” she said eventually, then took a sip.

“So, that’s an OK?” Sam pressed.

“Are you _asking_ me?” Wanda questioned. “You don’t need my blessing. You’re our Captain, now, Sam.”

“Well, yeah, but…” Sam trailed off, sharing an uncertain look with Bucky. “I don’t know—”

“We didn’t want to just leave without telling you,” Bucky finished for him. 

“Yeah,” Sam added, “we didn’t want you to worry.”

“Well, thanks for that,” Wanda said sincerely. “I’m still going to worry, but thanks for that.”

“You don’t gotta,” Sam insisted. “It’s just gonna be a simple in-and-out process to see what’s been going on in a little bad guy hive.”

“And if your bomber’s there? What’s the plan, then?”

Wanda didn’t miss the look Bucky shot Sam, as if that was a point of contention between them that had been left unsettled when they decided to come to her. “Well, that’s still up for—”

Sam shot a glare at him through the corner of his eye, hissing, “Shut…up.”

Wanda was starting to see why one—if not both—of them felt the need to come to her for a second opinion before leaving. “So, no plan, no back-up, following an outdated memory of the location, and only three fully-working knees between the two of you.”

“Yeah, OK, I know it’s not ideal,” Sam acquiesced. “But it’s the best chance we’ve got at getting a new lead on what’s going on with these guys before they scatter again. And the rest of _our_ team is still scattered to the winds for one reason or another, so…”

He shrugged.

Wanda sighed, internally conceding with the fact that any kind of reinforcements for this sort of thing had stayed unresponsive since Stark’s funeral. Only King T’Challa and Captain Danvers had shown any kind of concern for the state of the team over the past month or so since then, and Clint had only ever reached out to her, to see how she was faring personally. She supposed it did make sense for the two soldiers to feel as though they had only themselves to count on to resolve whatever trouble was brewing with this.

After a few heartbeats of deliberation with herself, the beginnings of a potentially questionable suggestion escaped her. “Well… _I’m_ here.” 

“No, yeah, I get that— _we_ get that,” Sam amended quickly, gesturing to himself and Bucky. “And of course, you’re welcome to stay while we’re gone. We were probably gonna regroup back here afterwards.”

“The distance will be good,” Bucky affirmed. 

“Not if another building falls on you two,” Wanda pointed out.

She heard a click at the surface of Sam’s mind, and coupled with his expression of realization, she realized he was just now catching onto what she had been trying to offer. “Hey, look, kid, we can’t ask you to come with. I know you’ve been, uh…tired of all this hero stuff for a while now, and we don’t want to push you out into the field so soon after everything that went down.”

“Then don’t push me out there,” Wanda said with a simple shrug, pausing for another sip of her tea. “Let me find something to do nearby, and I can be ready if you need the extra hands. Just like this last time.”

Bucky gave a thoughtful hum, shooting a look at Sam that indicated he thought it was a good idea. Maybe even he’d suggested it, himself. 

Sam, on the other hand, seemed torn. Eventually, though, her and Bucky’s combined stares seemed to get to him. “Alright, well…alright. I mean, I guess if you want to, we couldn’t stop you, anyways.”

Wanda agreed with a slight nod. Then, she was standing up and taking her mug with her to the kitchen to clean it. Before she left, however, she did manage to shoot a final question over her shoulder. “When do we leave?”

“Soon as we dust off the old gear,” Sam answered. “And it looks like we’ll need to pack it up in the big truck.”

* * *

“The big truck,” as Sam had called it, actually wasn’t that big at all. There was only a single bench seat in the cab, meaning the three Avengers had to cram themselves inside like sardines in a can. Not long after they left the house, she overheard Bucky mumble something about it apparently being another trademark of Captain America, to trap him in small cars with him. 

For once, though, Sam didn’t have anything to retort. Rather, he was in too good a mood over finally getting to leave the house to even consider hassling Barnes. 

That is, if one didn’t count him constantly pestering the other soldier to get into high spirits with him as a hassle. 

“C’mon, Buck,” Sam encouraged about halfway through their trip. Despite the long drive, he was practically vibrating in his seat, excited to have something to work on again. “Don’t tell me this fresh air isn’t good on those old bones.”

Bucky had only growled, pretending to be more invested in looking out his window, his face pressed into his flesh palm. Wanda could hear the surface of his mind steadily clicking. Likely going over all the possible outcomes of this mission, just as he’d been doing verbally while they were securing his and Sam’s gear into the bed of the truck. 

“How about some music, then, huh?” Sam pressed, twisting a knob on the radio until he found a particular song. “Hey, you’ll love this—you and Rogers missed this song by just a couple years. It’s a classic.”

“I don’t fuckin’ care,” Bucky grumbled.

Sam only turned the volume up, singing along in a cartoonishly deepened voice. “You could always count on me, darling! And from that day on, I made a vow, I’ll be there when you want me some way, somehow.” He drummed his hands against the wheel in beat with the music. “‘Cause, baby, there _ain’t no mountain high enough! Ain’t no valley low enough! Ain’t no river wide enough!_ ”

Admittedly, it did put a smile on Wanda’s face to see her old teammate so genuinely pleased with himself. She knew it had been a long two weeks for him—for all of them really—between physical therapy, cabin fever, and an impending sense they were letting a bunch of bad guys get the upper hand in… _something._ If this mission didn’t leave him with a fix for feeling productive, then it would at least be good for him to have gotten out of the house. 

“ _No wind! No rain…! No winter’s cold, could stop me_ —oh, shit.”

Hearing his slightly delayed reaction to realizing the radio signal had gone out, however, sent the witch in a full-blown fit of laughter. She tried to stifle it as best she could, even though holding her hand up over her mouth didn’t really do anything to fend off the sound of her snickers. 

Sam didn’t mind it, though. Instead, he simply worked on finding another radio signal, muttering to himself something along the lines of, “Alright, it’s alright, we can get back to it—just a hiccup, here.”

Wanda just laughed harder, her every effort to stop backfiring extremely. 

On the bright side, either her laughter or the situation that had triggered it had finally gotten through to Bucky, as well. He was of course much more discreet, but she caught his reflection in the window smiling, in spite of his efforts to hide it with his hand. She also caught his shoulders shaking a little, but heard no actual sound. Especially not when Sam found another song, at last.

“Ah, here we go—here we go! Another good one,” Sam insisted. “You might know this one, Terminator. Everybody was playing it back in its heyday.”

“I’ve never heard this song in my life,” Bucky stated flatly, even before Sam had turned the volume back up for them all to hear what the song was.

Sam sang along anyways, still in an exaggerated voice. “I know who I want to take me home! I know who I want to take me home! I know who I want to take me home! To take me home, hmm, hmm, hmm…”

He hummed throughout the following music break, and drummed his fingers against the steering wheel again. When the actual lyrics resumed, though, his voice was notably softer. Not necessarily singing, but more reciting the words as if on autopilot. As if he was in a daze.

“Closing time. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end…”

The song faded to a stop, but Wanda still heard noise. Something was buzzing in Sam’s mind. She glanced at him, finding his previously carefree, jovial expression was now scrunched into something more pensive, more perturbed. Not necessarily from anything there—she knew as much, given they were the only ones on the road at the moment. This had to be something strictly internal. 

It didn’t take long for her to recall what he’d just sung along to at the radio’s prompting.

_Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end…_

“Sam—”

He cleared his throat just as she opened her mouth to speak. He straightened in his seat, both hands flexing their fingers around the steering wheel. 

“What’s going on in that cyborg brain of yours, over there?” he asked with a glance thrown at Bucky. “I’m pretty sure I can hear the gears turning all the way from over here.”

Bucky sighed, leaning back in his seat. “Just wondering if we actually have a plan this time around.”

“Sure, we do,” Sam remarked, some of the light-heartedness of before seeping back into his voice. “We get in, we give ‘em the business, and then we slide through real quick. We got the Good Witch as our getaway driver. It’s foolproof.”

Bucky scoffed at that. “Yeah, sure sounds like it.”

“Sure does. You think so, too, right, Glinda?”

He met her gaze at that, as quickly as he could while also driving.

Wanda didn’t answer right away. She was still listening to that strange buzzing that lingered at the edges of his mind. Briefly, she wondered if maybe it had _been_ there before, and she’d just never paid much mind before. 

But, she knew when it wasn’t the right time to dig into something. So, for the time being, she only settled the matter with a light, “Sure thing, Cap.”

* * *

As it turned out, Wanda being there made quite a few things easier for the mission. 

For one thing, as they were nearing the building they had come to investigate, the witch was able to stop them from inadvertently acting too quickly.

“Not here,” slipped out of here before she truly realized she was speaking. “Not now.”

Sam had been in the process of parking across the street from the building’s entrance. However, at her quiet command, he drove right past it. “Why, what is it?”

As their car crept past, Wanda’s eyes stayed fixed on the security guard whose thoughts she had accidentally picked up on for as long as he remained within eyesight. The unnerving thing was, he maintained eye contact with her, too. Or at least, he was glaring at Sam’s truck, its shabby, old condition clearly not befitting the more formal wear of the patrons coming in and out of the entrance behind him. 

“Their security system,” Wanda finally answered, as Sam turned their truck around the corner onto the next block. “There’s a metal detector over the door.”

She heard the plates in Bucky’s prosthetic arm whir softly in agitation, followed by an equally soft curse from him. 

“Aight,” Sam huffed. “Change of plans, then.”

“Are you sure?” Bucky asked her curiously. Although, based on his cautious expression, she recognized what he was really asking. _How do you know that?_

Wanda was equally cautious in giving her answer, knowing that this side of her powers was one that could easily make someone with a history like Bucky’s uncomfortable. “I read him. I could hear he was on edge about something, and was worried he’d recognized us.”

In a quieter voice, just for his sake, she added, “I wouldn’t have done it, otherwise. I don’t do that anymore.”

He offered a nod in return, features softening as if to reassure _her_. “I believe you.”

“Well,” Sam cut in, “you may have to look into his head again. If I drive back around, do you think you could see if he knows about any other entrances?”

Wanda shook her head. “I’d need to get close to him to find something that specific.”

“How close?”

“Out of a moving truck, close.”

Sam sighed shortly. “Yeah, well, we’re not doing that. I promised not to make you more involved in field-work than necessary, and I intend to stand by it.”

“Well, we can’t go waltzing through that front entrance either,” Bucky pointed out bitterly. “We’ll be shot on sight. Especially since you didn’t bring the shield.”

That took Wanda aback, her gaze shooting to Sam beside her. “You didn’t bring the shield?”

“I didn’t bring the shield,” he affirmed flatly. 

All three of them groaned at that. 

Wanda pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers as she felt a rapid influx of activity at the surface of their minds. Bucky’s with frustration, both at the situation and with himself for having a metal arm, and Sam’s with desperation to come with a new plan, and fast. On top of it all, Wanda was mentally arguing with herself over how involved to get with the mission in order to assuage them both. 

With a huff of resignation, she finally spoke her thoughts aloud. “I’m going to have to get you past security.”

“No, you don’t,” was Sam’s immediate answer. “You don’t have to get anymore involved with this than you—”

The witch wasn’t about to waste time letting him argue with her on this. _Again._ “I already came all the way out here. And it _was_ for the purpose of covering your asses if anything went sideways.”

“Well, first of all, this is not it going sideways,” Sam insisted. “It’s a hiccup, at worst. Our plan is still foolproof.”

“Can’t be foolproof if a hiccup is possible, pal,” Bucky muttered.

“Oh, well, what would you suggest, Winter Smolder?” Sam challenged.

The other soldier scoffed, as if exasperated it was being left up to him. However, Wanda could hear the surface of his mind rapidly ticking just like Sam’s, indicating that he was genuinely trying to help come up with something. “Well, for starters, I do agree that we need a new plan. But, I also agree we’re gonna need to work with everything we have available to us.”

With a nod at Wanda between them, he added, “And everyone.”

* * *

They went with Bucky’s plan. That meant they were going to find and approach their suspects while hiding in plain sight amongst them. Something that was easy to come by for the Winter Soldier, a former “ghost” throughout the decades. 

To be totally honest, Wanda was still pretty uncertain of her own abilities in undercover work, especially given how her training under Natasha had been cut short by the Accords debacle. But, she was going to bear through it. She figured it would be easier to accompany her teammates now, than risk them needing another rescue from her later.

By the time they left the Big Truck in an outlet mall parking lot some few blocks away, rented and threw on some nice-ish dress wear to match the other patrons that had been coming in and out of the building (at least, Wanda and Sam did, with Bucky sticking to the bomber’s vest and uniform slacks he’d left the house in), and then returned to said building on foot, it was well past nightfall. There was a different security guard manning the door, and to their luck, he seemed too tired by his late shift to dig too deeply into the story Sam gave him about being there to meet some friends, with Wanda on his arm as his wife and Bucky sticking close on their heels as a personal bodyguard. 

The real test, however, was getting through that entry hall. The metal detector Wanda had sensed before was lurking overhead, like the kinds she had previously only seen in public airports. Two additional guards were eyeing the newcomers from their posts on either side of it. 

Sam let Wanda go first, passing it off as a “Ladies first,” gesture. She strode through the mechanical arch with her hands raised behind her head. Both as a sign that she wasn’t carrying anything, and as a way to hide her fingers as they twitched under the pressure of thin, scarlet coils leaving her form. She heard the telltale pops and crackles of her magic as they floated past her ear, hopefully too small to notice if no one thought to look while they snaked into the machinery overhead. Nerves twisted in her chest when she realized she couldn’t hear if they’d effectively impaired the mechanics of the machine. 

She just had to hope it had worked. She turned on her heel at the end of the machine (an impressive feat, given the heels she was wearing), anxiously watching as Sam followed her through, also with his hands raised. Things looked promising when nothing happened as he passed through, despite the fact that some of his field gear was strapped to his back, hidden from human eyes beneath his rented dress shirt and jacket. 

Bucky followed suit rather boldly, without any hesitation. It probably suited their cover story of having nothing to hide, but it still made Wanda’s stomach turn over in trepidation. Fortunately, the moment was over within just a few seconds, again with no trouble. Then, they were continuing down the hall as if that one, tiny moment _hadn’t_ been an entire driving point to their change of plans. 

It occurred to Wanda then that she had no idea of the soldiers’ plan beyond this point. She didn’t even know who exactly they were looking for, or how it would lead them back to that doctor that had given them hell all those years ago. 

Instead of asking anything, though, she merely looped her arm back around Sam’s for the sake of their cover. And also to be closer as he leaned over to whisper something to her. 

“This may be a lot, so just do the thing if you get overload, OK?”

Wanda gave a small nod.

Then, to Bucky just two steps behind them, Sam added somewhat louder, though still quiet in case someone else was nearby, “And you, lighten the hell up!”

Bucky made an indignant sound. “What am I—”

“You look like you’re plotting to murder anyone who makes eye contact with you. Take it easy! Less scary, less conspicuous.”

Bucky huffed, his mind buzzing with exasperation. No doubt because of Sam’s attempts to coach him at undercover work when he’d spent literal decades being known as ‘the Ghost of Hydra.’

However, before he could voice his arguments, Sam was leading them down a dimly-lit set of stairs, each step lined with a cheap-looking carpet. At the bottom was a single door. Sam subtly angled himself so that he would enter first (really, Wanda knew it was so whatever awaited them on the other side would have to face him first). 

What greeted them past the door was pure _noise._ Blaring music with bass strong enough to make the ground beneath Wanda’s heels vibrate. People shouting and laughing at the crowded bar on the other side of the room, as well as at the lounge tables scattered all around. A symphony of glasses clinking against the surface of tables as it seemed _everybody_ there was drinking. She assumed to cope with the fact that they were spending their evening in a place this dark and seedy. Now Wanda felt overdressed, even though she’d adorned the first simple knee-length, maroon dress she’d found at the outlet mall nearby. 

Now Bucky did comment, having to press close to Sam in order to be heard. “People meet _here?_ For _business?_ ”

Sam merely shrugged, which was barely noticeable given that the room’s primary source of light were the small lamps at every table. He might have muttered something more about who to keep an eye out for, but Wanda didn’t catch any of it. She was still getting used to all of the noise. Not just physical noise, but also the noise of so many minds around them. Wildly buzzing like a swarm of hundreds upon hundreds of bees. She knew if she took time to dig deeper and actually read those minds, though, she would find only semi-coherent messes blurred out by all of the liquor. 

That additional layer of sound was made only worse as Sam began leading them across the room, meaning they had to make their way past the other patrons. While Sam, and surely Bucky behind them, too, kept their eyes on their surroundings, looking for whatever suspect they had come to find, Wanda merely kept her head low, knowing the closer proximity to so many other people would only make it easier for her own attention to get swallowed up by their thoughts. 

Some thoughts _did_ slip past the usual barriers she set up for occasions such as this, though they were just as hazy as she’d predicted they would be. A couple of times, she picked up on some thoughts that had taken notice of her and her teammates. Although, they mostly resulted in lewd—borderline vile—fantasies involving Bucky that she, quite frankly, did not care for. They prompted her to blindly reach back for him with her free hand, tugging him closer by the sleeve of his jacket in a not-so-subtle gesture of ‘he doesn’t need someone to go home with.’ 

It wasn’t until they were halfway across the room that Wanda realized she could hardly bear it anymore. She slid her hand that was tucked into the crook of Sam’s arm further up to his bicep, giving two squeezes. 

True to a system that had started when they were under Steve’s leadership, Sam’s demeanor shifted. Instead of looking around for the subject of their mission, his gaze became trained on a “home base.” In this case, the bar on the other end of the room. Once they reached it, he pulled out the first available stool in sight and helped her hop onto it. Bucky hovered at her other side, clearly uncertain of where this was going or what it was for, but trusting her and Sam enough to not question it.

Again, Sam had to lean in close to be heard amidst all the noise. “You good?”

Wanda made a non-committal sound that was surely lost in all the commotion. “It’s better over here,” she elaborated.

Sam nodded, at least somewhat satisfied with that. With another nod, this time directed at Bucky, he said, “Well, we’ve got to keep going. But if you stay here, we can come back for you, yeah?”

“Sure.”

“OK.”

With nothing more, he slipped back into the crowd of people. Bucky lingered where he was for a few heartbeats, as if to ascertain for himself that Wanda was OK to stay behind. After she gave him a reassuring pat on his flesh arm, he followed Sam.

Wanda knew they didn’t truly need the help (at least, not yet), but she still kept an eye on them for as long as she could. It was a challenge given so many other patrons of the underground bar—most of whom were pressed up against each other like sweaty hogs in a pen—and under the dim lighting. Somehow, though, she managed to keep track of her teammates for as long as they were in the room. 

After only a few minutes of seemingly random wandering, Sam started in a new direction at a faster, more deliberate pace. Wanda couldn’t see what, or who, he was following, but rather watched out for Bucky, who was briefly separated from him when a couple of other attendees shouldered their way between them. But he was soon right back at Sam’s trail, the both of them disappearing down a hallway in a corner away from most of the activity. Likely a space reserved for staff only. 

Wanda waited a few minutes after her teammates disappeared from her line of sight, not wanting to assume the worst right away. For the time being, she sat back to lean both elbows against the bar, merely watching the other patrons at various tables (and pointedly ignoring the suggestive looks she was receiving from a few men and women there at the bar with her). However, it wasn’t long until she spotted some…interesting characters going down the same path Sam and Bucky had gone. She couldn’t discern what exactly their intentions were from across the room, but from the look the pair gave each other before heading down the hall, she didn’t think they were good.

Wanda was off the stool and back in the throng of people within a heartbeat. The noise—both physically and telepathically—was still a lot to take in, but at least this time, she had an actual purpose to keep her from falling too far into the depths of sensory overload. The next thing she knew, she had reached the side-hall, herself. Although by then, the pair of strangers that had followed her teammates were long gone. 

She trotted down the hall at a steady pace, rounding the corner to find another security guard standing there. In her haste to find her teammates, Wanda barely let him get a word out before she was waving a scarlet-wrapped hand at his face, shoving down any memory of seeing her there as she passed by him. She hadn’t used her powers to manipulate a mind in so long, she was almost taken aback at how easy it was, despite her technically being out of practice. But it was a thought for another day, she decided, as she proceeded down her path without catching any sign of Sam or Bucky. 

Her anxiety increased tenfold when she found herself at a fork in her path. At the end of the hall was a left turn down a new path, where there was even less lighting and the tacky carpet underfoot gave way to a small set of plain, dirtied hardwood stairs, and to the right was another hallway, full of doors. She couldn’t hear the minds of anyone down either hall, leaving it up to complete guesswork to determine which way would lead her to her boys.

As it turned out, she didn’t need to contemplate for long. She soon heard loud, pop-like sounds coming from somewhere down the left hall. Shots being fired.

Wanda burst into a run, her heels clacking against the wood stairs, betraying any attempt at subtlety. She ran until she reached this hall’s end, shoving her way past the metal doors there. What greeted her on the other side was crisp nighttime air, and a maze of portable buildings. The only source of light came from a low bulb hanging beside the doors she had just fled through, and a faint light from a building far off, on the other side of the property. 

Well, that, and the occasional flashes from guns firing on the other side of the portables.

Wanda sprinted across the pavement, using her scarlet to help her hover a little so that she wouldn’t have to worry as much about running in heels. The irony wasn’t lost on her that her job here was to help her teammates if they did anything stupid or dangerous, and yet, here she was, racing headfirst into a literal firefight. 

However, it wasn’t without its payoffs, though. She rounded the corner around a shed just in time to find a car speed straight off one of the backroads surrounding the area, and head straight towards the fray. And in the middle of its path was Bucky Barnes, currently locked in a struggle with two thugs in dark masks.

_Oh, no, you don’t!_ was the only thought Wanda managed before she was bursting forward, once again using her scarlet to get her across the ways in no time at all. She literally flew to the other side of the fight, landing clumsily due to those goddamn heels, but still reaching the other side of the property just in time to meet the speeding car head-on with her scarlet. She managed to hastily conjure up a sturdy-enough forcefield when the vehicle was no more than four feet away from her and Bucky. 

The car’s hood caved in against the sheet of psionic energy as if it were meeting a brick wall. The impact was so sudden that for the briefest of moments, the car veered up onto both of its front tires. Using her free hand, Wanda conjured up another sheet of scarlet to stop it from completely rolling over on top of her and her teammate, shoving it back down onto all fours. 

What followed next was pure madness.

With a startled yelp, Wanda felt herself getting pulled backwards by someone, only to find it was Bucky pulling her away from someone’s direct line of fire, the bullets clanging noisily off of his metal arm. The two adversaries that had previously been trying to pin him down were on the ground, making no efforts to get up, and instead simply covering themselves to avoid getting shot as well.

Wanda tried to follow as many sources of gunfire as she could pinpoint while they all went off at once. It didn’t help that among them was Bucky, returning fire with the small handgun that had previously been hidden in the back of his uniform underneath his vest. Not to mention, he also kept pulling her along with him in a mad scramble to find cover at the same time. What few trigger-happy thugs Wanda did manage to find got shoved backwards with bolts of scarlet, the hexes strong enough to stun them the same way a blow from Bucky’s metal arm would.

Wanda could feel herself getting swallowed up by the rush of it all, making seconds feel like hours. Each of which were filled with a cacophony of guns firing, the spark-like pops of her scarlet materializing, and people shouting as they tried to land a hit on either her or Bucky while they guarded each other’s backs. Once again, Wanda could feel the first few bites of overload starting to creep in from so much stimulus. However, she didn’t dare even think of stepping aside to catch a breath. Rather, all thoughts narrowed down to simply protecting Bucky, and wondering where the hell Sam had gone. 

Seconds, minutes—maybe even an hour, who knows—passed by before she found Sam at last. 

“Hey! _Hey!_ ” his voice shouted, desperately trying to be heard over the gunfire. Wanda followed that voice to find her other teammate atop the roof of the bar, his formal coat missing, and Falcon gear exposed where it sat over the dress shirt. “You reading me?”

It took Wanda all of a second to realize he was talking to her. Not just that, but asking if she could hear his thoughts from the middle of the backlot. 

She could. And she didn’t think Bucky was going to like what he had in mind. Rather than say that, though, she merely grabbed the former Winter Soldier’s free hand (the metal one), and obediently pulled him along, running closer to where Sam was on the other end of the maze of portables. 

Meanwhile, Sam disappeared from view. Likely getting a running start before he leapt off the edge of the roof. His signature mechanical wings promptly stretched out from either side of the device on his back, allowing him to glide through the air. 

As he neared Wanda and Bucky, the witch yanked her hand from the latter’s grip. The timing was near-perfect, allowing Sam to seize Bucky by the underarms, hauling him up into the air with him with nothing more than a disgruntled yell from the allegedly unflappable Winter Soldier. Wanda was quick to follow them, launching herself into the air again with streams of scarlet from either hand. 

True to Sam’s plan, they managed to fly until Sam’s wings couldn’t bear the combined weight of him and Bucky anymore. He less-than-gently dropped Bucky onto another roof, this one a library building a good few blocks away from the scene of their sudden fight. Bucky was growling in Russian when Wanda landed (more neatly, if she did say so herself) alongside them. 

“Oh, stop,” Sam was saying as he also found his footing, speaking to Barnes as if he was nothing more than a barking dog. “You knew it was coming, just as much as I did.”

“Knew what, genius?” Bucky snapped in English. “That the guy you found was gonna lure us into an ambush, or that you were planning on getting out of there the same way a goddamn pigeon gets away with a piece of popcorn?”

Sam scowled. Before he could retort with anything, Wanda stepped in (both figuratively, and literally, in-between them). 

“Please, do not do this now,” she said, voice trembling a little from a twisted mixture of lingering adrenaline and anxiety over how close she had been to _not_ saving Bucky’s ass (whether that car was going to try to abduct him or just plain run him over, she didn’t think she wanted to find out). She even heard some of her native Sokovian accent slip out, something she had tried not to use ever since going underground for the Accords, under the cover of an unassuming American. Something that only ever returned when she was truly angry or shaken.

She wondered if that slip of her accent was what effectively convinced the two soldiers to quell their argument (or at least stall it, for the time being). 

“Sorry,” Sam said earnestly. “You’re right, it can wait ‘til later. We’ve just gotta get some more distance from there.”

Bucky glared a little at the insinuation that Sam still intended to argue with him later. Although, instead of saying anything about it, he was considerate enough to start moving forward, over towards the edge of the roof. “Yeah, well, I saw the mall where our car is back that’a way.” He pointed to the direction in front of him. “That should make it easier to get some distance without you havin’ to carry me, Pin-Feathers.”

“What, you don’t like it, or something, Barnes?” Sam probed as he followed Bucky to the edge, Wanda keeping pace right beside him. “You trying to wound me right after a lady requested of us not to fight?”

“I didn’t say that,” Bucky returned flatly, barely waiting to see if they were following him before he jumped down onto the first landing of the library’s fire escape. “Might’ve implied it, but I didn’t say it.”

“Yeah, right,” Sam muttered, the words nearly lost amidst the whir of his wings being folded back into their pack. 

“If it’s any consolation, your hands _were_ gentle.”

“You always have to make it weird, don’t you?”

By then, Sam jumped down to join Bucky on the fire escape. He likely could have glided down with his wings, but Wanda had a sneaking suspicion he wanted to give Bucky grief for as long as he could manage before getting another reprimand from Wanda (who had every intention to skip the descent down a grated fire escape in heels, when she could simply float down with her scarlet). 

“Guys…” Wanda said in warning.

“Sorry,” they both called up to her in unison.

* * *

By the time the three Avengers not only found their truck, but also found a motel a decent distance away from the bar, the adrenaline had long worn off. Wanda was absolutely drained from the downslide of it, and she could tell even Bucky felt the same as he waited in the truck with her while Sam checked them in for the night. She probably didn’t help Bucky’s case any by taking him up on his offer to carry her on his back when he’d noticed her taking her heels off.

Once they reached their room, the small size and simple, slightly decrepit decor felt like a long-awaited blessing. Sam was apparently still in mission mode, making quick work of locking and deadbolting the door behind them, and shutting the curtains over both windows on either side of it. 

Meanwhile, Bucky trudged over to the bed. Wanda barely waited for him to turn around before she was pushing off his back and unwinding her legs from his waist so that she could flop backwards onto the mattress. A small yelp of surprise escaped her from how firm it was. 

Despite her warning that the mattress felt like a brick, Bucky promptly turned around to flop on his stomach onto the bed beside her, seemingly unbothered by its stiffness. 

“That could’ve gone better,” he groaned, eyes already shut as if he wanted to fall asleep right then and there.

“You’re telling me,” Sam said with a sigh, his mind humming in relief as he set down the suitcases full of their field gear that he’d been bearing on each arm. “But hey, at least we had the foresight to have some backup this time. Thanks for looking out, kid.”

He accentuated his point by offering his fist out to Wanda, which she gave a good-natured bump to with her own. 

“Alright,” Sam went on, now stepping past Wanda to smack Bucky on the back of his knees. “Get on up, Buck-nasty. You and I got an early start tomorrow, so let’s get you cozy on that floor.”

Bucky’s head immediately perked up. “The floor? Why? There’s a perfectly good couch right there,” he added with a nod to the small sofa on the other side of the bed.

“Because the couch is mine,” Sam said simply, as if it was the most obvious solution in the world. “And I’m a gentleman, so I thought the lady should get the bed.”

“Well, yeah, sure,” Bucky agreed to the notion of letting Wanda have the bed. The rest, however, filled him with enough indignation to pull him back onto his wearied feet. “But when did you get first claim on the couch?”

“Well, let me think,” Sam said sarcastically, throwing his head back in a false show of consideration. “I’m the one who drove us around all day and night. I’m the one who found this place for us to stop at. I’m the one who spotted our lead back there, and went after him. _And_ I’m the one who got _you_ out of there when things got heated. Your ass wasn’t exactly a lightweight. I’d say I’ve earned the couch.” 

Bucky scoffed. “What, you think rushing headfirst into an obvious ambush that may or may not have even had anything to do with our case is worth a reward? That’s a gas.”

“Hey, if you didn’t like the plan, you didn’t have to follow it.”

“And leave you to have your dumb ass handed to you? Wanda would’ve had my neck!”

The witch in question merely sat up as the two soldiers proceeded to argue, her eyes rolling so hard it was a wonder she didn’t see the inside of her skull. While in the exhausted state she was after the long day they’d had, her patience with listening to them try to speak over each other didn’t last very long.

“ _Sit down!_ ” she snapped after enduring just a few seconds more of it.

The pair obliged in an instant, dropping onto the mattress on either side of her without another sound. 

Wanda huffed, shaking her head a little. “I swear. If you’re going to act like children, then you’re going to be treated like children. No one gets the couch, and no one gets stuck with the floor. You both stay up here, with me.”

“Both of us?” Sam questioned, eyeing her as if she’d gone mad. “But what if something happens like…I don’t know—what if we bump knees or something?”

Wanda’s return was a deadpan, “Then I’ll pay for the wedding.”

Now it was Sam’s turn to huff at the absurdity of it all. “Fine, whatever,” he grumbled. “I suppose it doesn’t matter. We’ve only got a few hours ‘til morning anyways. Then we’ve gotta head out to finish what got interrupted back there.”

“God…” Bucky wiped his flesh hand over his face with a tired groan. “How are you already thinking about tomorrow? We can’t even enjoy this break from today?”

“Sorry, man.” Sam sounded anything but sorry—rather he seemed defeated, more than anything else—as he said that. He worked off his boots and stood up, so he could leave them with his gear against the wall opposite the bed. “It’s demanding work, but somebody’s gotta do it. If tonight taught us anything, it’s that we’re dealing with something at least twice as big as what we thought it was. If we’re gonna stay ahead of the game, we’re gonna have to keep at it.”

Bucky and Wanda both shared a look. The witch didn’t need her telepathy to tell her they were thinking the same thing.

Bucky was the one to speak on it. “You sound like Steve.”

Wanda fully expected a smart-ass retort to that, especially given their tired and cranky moods. But Sam didn’t answer with anything at all. Instead, he continued to fuss with his field gear as if he hadn’t heard. 

The surface of his mind, however, told a different story. It started with a slow, methodical ticking. But then it picked up speed, and it wasn’t long until Wanda realized it was the same pattern she’d heard earlier that day, on the drive there. The same thoughts when they were listening to music, to that one song, in particular. The one about new beginnings….

“Sam?” spilled out of her, an echo of the question she had tried to ask back then. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” he said, a little too quickly to be convincing, turning on his heel to return to the bed. “Just thinkin’ ‘bout tomorrow, still.”

“Yeah?” Wanda tilted her head curiously. “Because, it _is_ OK to rest for a moment, you know. Even Steve needed his breaks.”

“I know.” He huffed an almost laugh sound, though none of the amusement truly reached his eyes. “Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Guy had a fancy super-serum, and he still…”

Sam sank back down onto the mattress, this time slower. More weary. His gaze stayed at his lap, where he was wringing his hands together. 

The longer her went on without finishing his seemingly light-hearted thought, the more Wanda could tell what he’d really been keeping to himself ever since the drive—or hell, maybe even longer—was starting to surface against his will. She could feel the emotions—a whole storm of them, clashing against each other in a great gust, like steam that had been capped for too long—radiating off of him. Ironically, the almost tangible force of it pushing out so strongly only drew her closer to him, scooting over to lay a hand on his shoulder for comfort. 

“It’s OK to miss him,” she reminded gently. She wondered if Bucky, at her other side, recognized his own sentiment being brought back from the night she cut his hair. It was a reminder she had repeated to herself several times since then, whenever she tried again to ignore her grief for her friend.

“I mean…I get it. After all that happened, especially while we were gone…I get wanting to get away,” he admitted. Briefly, Wanda wondered if he somehow knew he was directly echoing her own thoughts on the matter. Trying to protect their Captain’s good memory, even though their last memory of him was hurtful. “It just…left a lot of things up in the air.”

“Yeah. And it put a lot of responsibility on you,” Wanda agreed. “And so soon after…what happened.”

_The Snap,_ she meant. The moment they had each died. Where the world they had known was forced to mourn—and in some ways move on, without them—only for them to return just as suddenly as they’d gone. For their closest friend to leave them to rediscover their footing under those conditions, _alone_ … 

“It isn’t fair,” she whispered, barely audible to her own ears.

“He trusted me, though,” Sam pointed out, the barest hints of defensiveness coloring his tone. “Trusted I could handle it. I’ve got to honor that.”

“You will.”

“I’m…I’m definitely trying. I don’t have a serum like he got, so…sometimes, I don’t know how I’ll…or if I’m…”

He clenched his hands into fists in his lap, frustrated with himself for losing the words. The late hour after a full day of driving and fighting as he had probably didn’t make for the best conditions to be unloading this, but he managed to articulate enough for Wanda to capture the gist. 

_If I’m doing enough_. 

She didn’t think for a second Steve would have asked Sam to take over for him if he thought the other man _couldn’t_ handle it. While she knew Steve well enough to be certain of that, however, she still wasn’t sure if she knew Sam well enough to effectively convince him of it. So, she simply slid her hand around to his other shoulder, offering him the smallest of sympathetic hugs for comfort. 

“I say screw the serum.”

Both Wanda and Sam looked to Bucky at his soft declaration. He didn’t return either one’s gaze. He was only staring listlessly ahead. As if only half of him was still there in the room with them. In this _time._

“The whole ‘Captain America’ schtick…that was all someone else’s creation. Just some symbol for people to get behind. But the actual work being done…the guy we were all following out in the field…that was all Steve Rogers. Not necessarily because he was the guy with a super-soldier serum, but because…well, he was someone we _knew_. We knew he was the kind of guy you could count on in a fight. Not some _thing_ to rely on, but _someone_.”

His gaze ducked downward, flesh thumb fiddling with the gold inlay in between the plates of his metal hand. There was a hint of nostalgia to it, a sort of longing for times past that Wanda remembered seeing when she first saw him sitting alone in that exhibit at the Smithsonian. “It was that scrawny kid from Brooklyn who was always unafraid to fight that made Captain America. Not the other way ‘round.”

Wanda gave a soft hum in agreement. Then she turned to Sam to add, “And that scrawny kid knew you could upkeep the symbol after him. Because he knew _you._ ”

She rubbed Sam’s shoulders a few more times, this time feeling the previous tension there finally abate. The corners of his mouth quirked up in what Wanda was sure were the beginnings of some smart quip. Some sort of brave face to hide the fact that he was actually feeling better about himself because of words that came from Bucky, who he ‘couldn’t stand.’ 

In the end, though, what came out was a simple, “Yeah. I guess so.”

Wanda offered a small smile, squeezing his shoulder in another half-hug. She laid her head on his other shoulder in the thoughtful silence that followed, simply letting him feel her presence there. And with it, hopefully, her support. 

With her free hand, the witch reached out to Bucky at her other side, shooting him another small, appreciative smile for his words. Bucky scooted closer to reach her outstretched hand, barely even hesitating to lace the fingers of his metal hand with her flesh ones. He laid his head to rest on her shoulder, whether from tiredness from their long night, or from needing to process something of his own, she didn’t know. She merely basked in the silence herself, feeling the draining after-effects of adrenaline swiftly returning into her blood, weighing her down right through the bones.

“So…” she pressed gently after a few heartbeats. “Does that mean we can actually pace ourselves?”

Sam chuckled. “Yes.”

“And…does that mean we get to sleep in tomorrow?”

A few more beats of silent thought. Then, “Sure.” 

“ _Yes!_ ” Wanda breathed in relief, flopping backwards to lie supine against their brick of a mattress again.

“Hey, see that? Already my favorite Cap,” Bucky added, flopping tiredly down beside her.

* * *

The rest of the night—and most of the morning—were a drowsy blur of time for Wanda. She had a vague memory of finally shedding that rented (well, stolen now) dress and slipping back into a paint-stained sweatshirt and loose jeans she’d borrowed from Sam’s sister’s wardrobe. The next thing she knew, she was waking up atop the motel bed with a single throw blanket barely covering her and both soldiers (yes, she slept in-between them, because _God forbid_ they make any physical contact while in their vulnerable state of sleep). Sam was stirring, admittedly doing his best to be as discreet as possible as he got up and threw his uniform vest back on, over the undershirt and pants he’d slept in. 

He was less discreet, however, in shaking Bucky awake on the other side of the bed. Despite having a super-serum enhancing his system, and thus requiring him to need less sleep, Bucky grumbled tiredly in protest, stubbornly curling his fingers into Wanda’s sweatshirt where his flesh arm had fallen over her stomach sometime in the night. 

“Turn him off,” he groaned into her shoulder, making Wanda laugh a little.

“Come on, T-800. You don’t need no more beauty sleep,” Sam whispered, clearly trying to let Wanda sleep still. Or perhaps not, seeing how his next mode of action was to roughly shove Bucky’s shoulder and smack his side, making the entire bed rock with the other soldier’s disturbed weight. 

With just a few more grumbles, Bucky finally obliged. While he got up and searched for the vest for his own uniform, Sam leaned over the side of the bed to speak to Wanda. “You good to be on standby for us back here?”

“Yep,” Wanda answered, rubbing the last traces of sleep from her eye. “I think I’m good to sit this one out.”

“Aight, then. We’re just gonna be back at the same site as yesterday. Gonna see what they were cooking up in all those sheds. Should be just an in-and-out job.”

“Hmm.” Wanda’s eyebrow quirked in skepticism. “I’ve heard that one before.”

“But this time, I _mean_ it,” Sam insisted, although his smiling eyes indicated he knew Wanda wasn’t seriously getting after him for anything. “We’ll keep you posted.”

And with that, he and Bucky gathered their gear, left a burner phone on the nightstand for her, and were gone.

Wanda took her time getting up, herself. It had been so long since she’d had a genuinely restful night’s sleep, and while it had been the product of a long, trying night, she was going to indulge in that feeling of being well-rested for as long as fate allowed. After another hour or so spent half-dozing in bed while she waited to hear for an update on the investigation, she finally got up and braved stepping outside to try some of the free continental breakfast the motel had advertised on its sign. 

She was halfway through pouring some honey into a mug of tea when her burner phone finally buzzed to life in her pocket. She answered it without much thought, pinning the phone between her ear and shoulder as she carried her precariously full mug to a table with her. “Yes?”

Bucky’s voice answered her. “Wanda?”

“James? Is everything going OK?”

“Yeah…yeah, for the most part.”

Wanda’s tea was immediately forgotten, her gaze staring straight ahead as if she could manifest the boys into being right in front of her. “What happened?”

“Um, well…it was actually coming along pretty well. Not as many people there this morning, so we actually got to have a good look around. I think you would’a been proud this time around—I was actually watching ol’ Wilson’s back and everythin.’”

She heard Sam try to add something from somewhere behind him, his voice giving off an odd echo that she couldn’t imagine coming from anywhere in the building they had visited last night. 

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Yeah, that’s the thing…” Bucky answered, sounding almost nervous to explain it to her. “We kind of, um…well, hit another—what’s it called?”

His voice faded for a bit, overlapping with something more Sam was saying. 

“No, not a…a _hiccup_ ,” Bucky found eventually. “Hence, the call. So, don’t be worried, but it may take us a little longer than planned to get out of here and back to you.”

“Where are you?” Wanda pressed, a little annoyed that their idea of calling for help was simply to let her know they needed it, and not letting her know how she could _apply it_.

“Uh…”

Another faint conversation. This time, Wanda could swear she heard Bucky say something along the lines of, “She’s not gonna believe that!”

Sam was still in the middle of insistently trying to convince Bucky of something when Bucky finally, directly replied to her with, “OK, look, we wound up somewhere north, I think. In the, um…the Reis County Correctional Complex.”

“Are you—” Wanda had to stop herself from yelling her indignant thought aloud, mindful that while the motel wasn’t exactly busy, there _were_ a few other sleepy-eyed patrons around her. Dropping her voice to a hiss, she said, “Are you in _jail?_ ”

Bucky’s voice dropped as well, brought to a low volume from shame. “A little.”

“Wha—are you—?” Wanda stumbled over her words, her mind instantly becoming torn between remembering the last few times they had been arrested—Bucky in Berlin, where the same mad doctor they were now hunting had first gotten ahold on him, and her and Sam in Leipzig, which led to the Raft prison in the middle of the ocean, which led to that _fucking jacket and collar_ —and remembering the fact that this instance was different, and didn’t have to be like either of those instances at all.

Not if she could help it.

“Are you two alright?”

“Yeah,” Bucky answered, his voice the most certain it had been during this entire call. He probably heard the barely concealed panic in her voice, for she’d spoken before she’d fully warded off her memories of the Raft. “We’re OK. Both of us. There wasn’t another fight, or anythin.’ They’ve just got us in a little holding cell until they figure out where to put us.”

“OK…OK.” Wanda paused to force herself to breathe, to settle down so that she could approach this wisely. “I’ll be there soon—” 

“No, Wanda, it’s really OK,” Bucky said insistently. “We’ll figure something out, we just…”

Now, he paused, apparently debating with Sam once again over how exactly to explain it to her. 

“We…we don’t wanna give ‘em a reason to come after you, too. We didn’t even want them to find you—it’s why we gave in so fast when they first showed up and gave chase. We didn’t want to lead ‘em back to you.”

Wanda swallowed down a frustrated sound at the injustice of it all. She understood the concern, of course. Ever since Lagos, her mere presence was enough to unsettle law enforcements, even without her using her powers. If she were to go storming into a jailhouse, scarlet glowing at her fingertips, to break out two vigilantes that had just been arrested themselves, it would only give federal authorities of all kinds an excuse to pursue her (or at least, more actively pursue her, if one counted SWORD’s repeated attempts to recruit her). To do hell knows what with her, and claim it was all for the sake of enforcing the Sokovia Accords. Nevermind if she had previously tried to use those powers to destroy an Infinity Stone, to hopefully thwart the events of the past five years, or even to simply break her friends out of jail when they were needed to stop new evils. 

But she wasn’t going to just leave them there, either. She would just have to go about helping them more carefully. She was going to need to recruit some help of her own, from someone with proper, _legal_ experience getting someone else out of jail.

“OK,” she repeated, this time effectively sounding calmer. More sure of her own plans. “So, you both went with them? Then, what happened to the Big Truck?”

“The truck? It’s…probably still downtown, where we left it near the bar. Why?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just stay there. I’m going to try something.”

“Wanda—”

“ _James._ It’s alright. Just trust me, OK?”

There were a few beats of silence. She didn’t even hear anything from Sam (though, it was difficult to discern if he had even been able to hear her from wherever he was standing near Bucky). Eventually, Barnes finally answered her with a shade of reluctance in his voice. “OK. We do.”

Wanda only nodded and hung up. She was on her feet and leaving the motel dining area within an instant, completely forgetting her tea behind her. She made a beeline for their room, collecting what little of their belongings were still left there in a small, beat-up suitcase from Sam’s college days. After that, she would have to find a cab or something to get her back into town and retrieve their truck. 

However, before she did that, she had another call to make first. She traded her burner phone for her personal StarkPhone, thumbing through the contacts there with a speed that would have made her brother proud. Then it was a matter of waiting for an answer, her heart pounding during the first few tries, wherein she was met with a voicemail message. On her fifth try, though, she finally got ahold of Pepper Stark.

* * *

Wanda stalked through the halls of the police station with a confident decorum she didn’t truly feel inside. She knew there were dangers in being a fugitive and walking right into a police station in broad daylight as if she owned the damn building. Her only solace was the folder tucked into the crook of one arm, filled with paperwork she had hastily printed out at the local library, and the lines fed to her during her phone call that she kept reciting in her head (even though her scarlet never let her forget _anything_ ). 

After a brief confrontation at the front of the building, she soon found herself wandering through a small maze of hallways, guided by her telepathy’s ear as she searched for the familiar thought patterns of Sam and Barnes. Soon, that led her to a room in the very back of the building, where she promptly found them sitting behind bars, pressed against each other on a bench opposite a scruffy-looking stranger, who appeared to be asleep, slumped in the corner. Both soldiers perked up when they saw her enter the room, rushing for the cell door. 

Wanda subtly brought up her free hand in a silent command to stay put as she ventured towards a desk on her side of the room. The officer behind it looked big and surly, his hair shaved close to his head and a thick goatee of grayish-brown hair encircling his mouth. He stood up straighter at the sight of her, gruffly asking, “Can I help you?”

“Yes,” Wanda breathed in reply, setting down her folder between them with an air of forced professionalism. “I’m here to collect James Barnes and Samuel Wilson.”

The officer crossed his arms over his chest, looking down at her shorter frame with all the insufferable pretension of a school kid staring down an ant mound. “On what grounds?”

“Wrongful imprisonment.”

The officer scoffed. 

“I mean that,” the witch stated firmly. “On what grounds did you make your arrest?”

He regarded the two soldiers in the cell beside them with an arched brow. “Well, for starters, they were trespassing on private property.”

“Property which hasn’t recognized a living owner on any document in almost a decade?” Wanda flashed back. “I hardly believe anyone was around to make complaints over them passing through.”

“Yeah, well, they’ve also been wanted men for several years now, for working with that band of circus freaks without signing anything to officiate themselves.”

Wanda spared herself only a second to be relieved at the realization that he didn’t recognize her as another member of said ‘band of circus freaks.’

“Anything, as in paperwork. As in the Sokovia Accords, you mean?” she asked with a coolness she did not at all feel on the matter at hand. The Accords had become the root for so much strife in her life, forcing her teammates—her only home—to become divided, to driving her into a life on the run when she refused to sign them. When she refused refused to sign _her life_ away just for being an enhanced individual.

But she kept up her unwaveringly assertive charade. She had learned more than a few things from Natasha Romanoff, after all. “Let me ask you something, sir. What is your date of birth?”

The seemingly random question effectively knocked him off-guard. “Wh…what?”

“Your date of birth. I trust you have one.”

The officer shook his head briefly, still confused by the question. “Um…July 12th. 1977.”

“Oh, good,” Wanda feigned a relieved smile. “So, you _were_ alive before the year 2016. Well, then, I’m sure you remember all of the deliberations leading up to the Accords, as well as their initial passing that year.” 

She paused to flip open the folder she had brought and point out a section of the document inside. “In all that time, it was never explicitly stated that the Accords applied to the Avengers group. Rather, their purpose was to regulate public actions of enhanced individuals. And while several members of the Avengers serve as prime examples, you will see here…” 

The officer leaned over to read what she was pointing to, his meaty hand flopping down between them to pin the sheet of paper in place. 

“The document itself states its terms and conditions only legally apply to individuals who meet these listed enhanced physicalities. And while he would like to _think_ otherwise,” she shot a glare at Sam that _wasn’t_ just for show, making him shrink in on himself where he and Bucky were still watching from the cell door, “Mr. Wilson does not meet the qualifications to be classified as an enhanced individual. Therefore, the terms of the Accords do not officially apply to him, leaving him exempt from arrest for noncompliance. He is, you see, a regular, fragile human being. Not unlike yourself, sir.”

Wanda added the last bit with a pointed look up and down the officer’s form to unnerve him. She didn’t need her telepathy to know when it worked. The way his gaze quickly shied away from hers was telling enough.

“Granted,” she went on, “Sergeant Barnes, on the other hand, _does_ meet some of the qualifications presented here. But judging from the looks you’re giving me, I take it you’re not going to just take my word for it on how he is also exempt, so allow me.”

With one hand, she gently smacked the officer’s hand off of her paperwork. With the other, she was flipping the papers to unveil the last in the pile, which consisted of printed screenshots of the conversation she’d had with Queen Ramonda of Wakanda immediately after her phone call to Pepper, who had prompted the Queen to message her with the statements she needed there. 

“Here, you will see verification from the Queen Mother of Wakanda that Sergeant Barnes has already served detention within her country’s borders. After a lengthy rehabilitation there, he received clearance from all active members of the royal family to serve in active-duty combat within their army. In doing so during the invasion of their central city five years ago by extraterrestrials, he officially earned himself full absolvation of his existing charges by the Queen Mother, Ramonda. That included official seconding from both her son and daughter, the former of which is the current active ruler of the nation, and the latter of which oversaw the entire rehabilitation process firsthand. 

“So,” Wanda swept the folder closed for an air of finality, “unless you would like to be the one to tell an entire royal family that you wish to question their judgement, I’d suggest you consider Sergeant Barnes exempt from the charges you have presented here, today.”

The witch finalized her point by leaning over the officer’s desk and locking her fingers together over her paperwork, eyeing him expectantly. He merely stared back at her with his mouth hanging open like a stunned animal. She could hear the surface of his mind, in contrast, buzzing furiously as it tried to process everything she had just presented him with. Even Sam and Bucky’s minds, she could hear ticking steadily nearby, one in amazement and one in dismay, though she didn’t listen close enough to find out which was emanating from which. 

“I, um…well,” the officer eventually stammered out, only to find himself unable to finish a solid thought for a counterargument. 

Fortunately, before Wanda was forced to make up another case for the soldiers being pardoned, an older gentleman poked his head through the entryway of the room. It was an officer who had stopped her when she first entered the building, and had first received this spiel from her. 

“Howey,” he barked over her head, his voice deep and gruff, as if he were trying to swallow his own mustache. “Her story checks out. We just got a call, and got our ears chewed off by that…Queen lady.”

“Howey” still looked lost. Yet after shooting a look at his commanding officer, then Wanda, then back again, he finally obliged. He crossed over to the cell door with his head bowed, as if suddenly wary of meeting Wanda’s eye and potentially earning another long-winded harangue from her. 

As soon as the door was opened for them, Sam and Bucky shuffled out in a haste like kenneled dogs. They made a beeline for Wanda, moving to stand on either side of her. She lightly tapped each one’s side as they passed her—a habit from her days of travelling with Pietro, whenever they needed to ascertain the other was there and alright. 

With her soldiers finally with her again, Wanda addressed the two officers once more. “Thank you for your cooperation, gentlemen. If you please…”

She grasped her folder of paperwork, tucked it back into the crook of her arm, and strode back the way she’d come without another word. Bucky didn’t waste any time before following dutifully behind her. Sam lingered for a second, something at the surface of his mind clicking loudly as if building up a last comment. However, he ultimately decided against it and trotted back after her and Bucky. 

When she could see the front door to the station and hear the surface of both soldiers’ minds behind her, Wanda felt like she could finally breathe. She exhaled a shaky, heavy breath and reached for the soldiers behind her with her free hand. She felt the sleek, cold texture of Bucky’s metal hand slip over her offered palm. 

Meanwhile, Sam was too busy rambling in hushed excitement to notice her steadfast resolve was slowly slipping away. “Goddamn—that was something else! What—that was badass! Why didn’t you ever mention that speaking legalise was on your list of powers?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s great,” Wanda replied distractedly, stopping in her tracks so that she could turn and face them. “Are you two alright?”

“Yeah,” Bucky answered with a slight nod. 

“Hardly a scratch on either of us,” Sam added. “Seriously, that, back there, was probably the most exciting part of this whole mess! Although, I think I could’ve done without the whole bit about fragile—”

“Miss!” someone called from behind them, and something in Wanda’s gut intrinsically knew it was in reference to her. The two soldiers before her half-turned to see the source of the call, revealing the older gentleman who Wanda had first encountered when she got to the station. He came to stand just a few steps before the three Avengers, hands on his hips in a sign of forced casualness. “Maximoff, isn’t it? Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Wanda’s heart plummeted into her stomach. She had been on edge about getting Sam and Bucky out of there, yes, but a part of her had also been anxious about being recognized, herself. She was just as wanted by the general public, if not more due to how much people feared her powers, and she wasn’t so sure any of the lines Pepper or Queen Ramonda had given her could be used to convince them to let her go here. 

Her only consolation was having teammates on either side of her. Sam’s demeanor shifted in an instant, going from loose relief to hardened solemnity as he appraised the officer. At the witch’s other side, Bucky took a small step forward, his hand slipping out of hers, but keeping the other arm out, in front of her. 

“Well,” Sam started, crossing his arms over his chest, “seeing how she’s currently serving as our legal rep, we’d be more comfortable staying with her. Just to make sure everything stays on the up-and-up, and we all understand everything, you know? You wouldn’t have a problem with that, huh?”

The officer eyed both soldiers. Wanda could hear the surface of his mind ticking indignantly, wanting to argue with Sam just for the sake of pride. However, she could hear that activity gradually lessen the longer he examined the two other men. He was, himself, a bony, rather frail-looking older man, so the mere idea of challenging not just one, but two younger (biologically, at least, in Bucky’s case) men as large and burly as them must have intimidated him. 

“Not at all,” he said with confidence Wanda knew wasn’t all there. “I suppose that is understandable. Although, I think it is worth noting that this is actually about Miss Maximoff, and the phone call we received about her after you two put her number in our system.”

Wanda’s apprehension snowballed at that, already aware of where this was heading even without looking into the chief officer’s mind. 

“What phone call?” Bucky demanded.

“Some organization that was looking for Miss Maximoff,” the officer answered, all while his gaze stayed on Wanda. “Said they’ve been trying to get a hold of her for a while now, wanting to know if she was gonna commit to their program.”

“Program?” Sam wondered aloud, his voice a whisper, meant only for Wanda as he turned to eye her over his shoulder in confusion. 

She could hear Bucky’s mind give a sharp tick with an urge to ask about the same thing. Outwardly, though, he acted wholly unfazed, continuing to stare down the chief officer. 

Rather than explain it to them, Wanda replied to the officer. “Well, rest assured that I have been carefully considering their offer. However, my ultimate decision is meant to be confidential, so for the time being, I don’t think it should be too much of a concern for you. Now, if you’d please let us…”

She made a vague sound of dismissal, grabbing both of her soldiers by the back of their jackets and trying to pull them along with her through the threshold of the doors. 

The chief officer’s next comment left them rooted in place, though. “Miss, they’re offering you immunity from the Accords in exchange for participation in their program.”

Wanda could hear a sharp tick of interest go off in both soldiers’ heads at that. In all honesty, she could feel something shift inside herself, too. This was the first she’d heard of _that_ offer, and while she’d previously had moments of temptation to acquiesce to what SWORD wanted (mostly when she’d been alone, not yet living with Sam and Bucky), it had never been a temptation _this_ strong before.

Then again, the Accords had never been brought into it before. That godforsaken document that had split up the only family she’d had left, sent her into this life of hiding, of loneliness—that was a constant reminder of how much the world around her viewed her as a weapon. Something to be feared, to be stored away to make others feel safer. 

This wasn’t the place to debate this decision, though. Least of all with some inconsequential old man who she had originally met solely for the purpose of convincing him to free her friends. 

Evidently, said friends agreed. Bucky angled himself away from the older man, his arm hovering in front of Wanda as if to fold her away from sight at a moment’s notice. Sam, meanwhile, took a half-step closer to the police chief, all but looming over the older man and stating firmly, “Hey. She said she’s handling it, chief. And it’s a confidential decision. So, I think you should respect that.”

The officer held up his hands in a gesture of harmlessness. “I didn’t mean any offense. Just trying to think of the good of the majority.”

This time, Bucky was the one to speak. “Yeah,” he scoffed in disbelief. “I’ll bet.”

Rather than entertain the conversation any further than that, he reached out to tug lightly on Sam’s sleeve, urging him towards him and Wanda with a soft, “C’mon.”

Sam finally obliged, turning towards the exit with only a lingering glare at the older man, as if silently warning him not to say anything more to bother Wanda with. Fortunately (for his sake), the officer didn’t say a thing. Although, Wanda could practically feel his curious gaze on their backs like a physical weight, following the three Avengers out the door and eventually into the parking lot. 

Once again, it felt like Wanda could breathe only when they reached a certain area. That is, the side of the building where she had left the Big Truck, away from any windows and—hopefully—any onlookers. 

As soon as they had each reached the truck, Sam tried again to ask, “What was that about?”

“It’s nothing,” Wanda insisted, already busying herself with looking for the truck keys in her jeans’ pockets and getting the right key into the lock on the side of the driver’s door. 

“Oh, really?” 

Sam’s no-nonsense tone was enough to make her look up from the lock on the door, finding him staring her down with a disappointed, yet still concerned expression that seemed eerily reminiscent of Steve. “After all the shit we went through when one group of yahoos in suits first tried to enact the Accords, you’re gonna tell me some other group that’s probably under their wing, and trying to get ahold of you, is nothing? Especially when they’re talking about getting you out from under those conditions?”

“Allegedly,” Wanda grumbled in skepticism before she could stop herself. 

“How long have they been trying to contact you?” Bucky asked. To his credit, he was at least attempting to seem more neutral than Sam was. But from his pinched brow, and the troubled clicking at the surface of his mind, Wanda knew he was equally bothered about her keeping something from them. 

“I don’t know exactly.” Despite her honesty, Wanda averted her gaze to the pavement beneath their feet, uncomfortable with this kind of intensely worried gaze from both of them. “It couldn’t have been more than a few weeks. Sometime after I took James to the house.”

“You’ve been getting calls the whole time you were staying with us?” Sam demanded.

“What’s the program?” Bucky added. Again, he was doing a much better job at least appearing to be neutrally curious. “It has to be something serious if they’re willing to rework the Accords around it.”

“I don’t know,” Wanda repeated. “Something to do with missions—like what SHIELD used to do—but under the condition any sentient weapons involved are officially registered with them as such.”

The phrase ‘sentient weapons’ caused a visceral shift. Sam sank backward, tipping his head back in understanding. He was no less tense, but he did seem more understanding over what this was all about. 

Bucky, on the other hand, seemed to have absorbed all of the other man’s frustration and anger. Wanda had only known him personally for little more than a month now, but this was the first she saw any traces of the cold, menacing Winter Soldier everyone else believed him to be. For all of his bickering and squabbling with Sam, this was the first time she had even seen him truly, _vehemently_ angry. And because she didn’t want to look inside his head for risk of triggering him to remember his experience with Hydra, she couldn’t even tell if his anger was directed at the situation, or with her, still, for keeping such a matter to herself.

Wanda shifted uncomfortably, forgetting for a moment that she had the truck keys in her hand, granting her a chance to dismiss the conversation and hide away inside. Instead, she merely clutched the keys in an anxious fist, not caring how painfully each one’s teeth bit into her skin. 

“Look, it doesn’t matter right now,” she insisted. “It’s not like I’ve said anything to them, in return.”

She realized too late that saying that was probably of very little comfort. Or rather, the implication that she hadn’t immediately said ‘no’ was. But, it seemed to be enough to appease the situation for the time being. At least, for Sam.

“Yeah. Well, I guess that answers that, then.” With a barely noticeable nudge against Bucky’s arm beside him, Sam finally stepped forward to take the keys from her. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

Bucky sighed shortly before going along with Sam’s subtle urging. He stalked around to the other side of the truck, cold fury still emanating from his very being. Wanda could especially feel it once Sam opened the door on their side for her, allowing her to slide in between them. Then, when Sam was securely inside the truck as well, they began a tense journey home without another word shared between them. 

* * *

Somewhere along the road to Sam’s family’s house, the endless stretch of plain roads lulled Wanda into an uncomfortable sleep. Hazily, she was aware of herself shifting to get more comfortable, which ended up with her resting her head on Bucky’s shoulder as she fully succumbed to the highway hypnosis. It was an uneasy sleep, with her senses constantly welcoming back certain sounds and textures, putting her right on that edge of sleeping and waking. 

Evidently, she _seemed_ to be fully asleep to the outside world. At some point, when her senses were flirting with wakefulness again, she picked up on a conversation that was surely not intended for her to hear, if the hushed tones were anything to go by. 

“…seriously suggesting we just let them take her?”

That sounded like the deep timbre of Bucky, his voice still simmering in that unnervingly icy Winter Soldier ire. 

“Well, what the hell else are we supposed to do?” Sam hissed back, clearly struggling to keep his voice low based on the tight way he spoke, as if through gritted teeth. “Tell her she can’t go? Try to tell her where and how she _can_ use her powers? Gee, doesn’t that sound familiar?”

“You were _with her_ when they took her a first time—when she was at that underwater prison. You saw firsthand what they want to do to—”

“I _know._ You think I don’t know it’s completely fucked up? You think I don’t like it any more than you do? But what can we do? If it’s something she’s considering, we have to—”

“They’re addressing her as a _weapon._ They’re gonna treat her like one.”

“Yeah, I get that—”

“Do you? Do you know what it’s like to be treated like—like less than human? Like a time bomb, constantly ready to—to wreak havoc—something that needs to be…”

The body Wanda was leaning against shuddered with a heavy breath. Her telepathy, while still somewhat suppressed by the effects of her being half-asleep, could feel a brush of anger that was promptly smothered by an aggressive wave of self-restraint. Had she been more with it, Wanda probably would have expressed how proud she was of Bucky for not letting himself get completely absorbed by his negative emotions. A testament to how he was actually far from the primal, unreasonable killing machine the mass public associated him with.

The self-image placed on him that was making him so angry at this very moment.

Rather than reveal she was half-listening to their conversation, though, Wanda simply readjusted herself against Bucky’s side, moving her head back up his shoulder where it had begun to slide off. She sighed softly, trying in earnest to fall back asleep. 

The soldiers went quiet at that. Bucky tensed beside her, as if expecting her to wake up. However, before she could actually slip back under the nothingness of sleep, she heard their whispered argument continue.

“We don’t know if they’ll try anything to hurt her—”

“That’s a chance you’re willing to take?”

For all of their bickering that had all been more or less harmless in the past, Bucky had never sounded so short with Sam. So genuinely, deeply heated about the matter at hand. 

“It’s not a risk _we’re_ deciding on. She is. And she said she hasn’t even said anything yet, so there’s still a chance she’ll ultimately say no.”

A moment of silence followed after that. Though, Wanda knew she hadn’t merely fallen asleep, for she could still feel and hear Bucky’s short, upset breaths beside her.

Eventually, she felt a slight weight on her knee. The plated texture of a metal hand. 

“And if she doesn’t? What then?”

“Well, then I guess that was her choice.”

“No, I mean…for us. What are we supposed to do without her?”

Sam took longer to answer that. Then after a few heartbeats, he said in an unconvincing voice, “I guess the same thing we were _going_ to do before that building fell on us. Just let her go about her life, and we go about our missions. We’ll call in help when we need it, like she wanted, but just…from other places.”

Fully-awake Wanda would have probably been bothered that Sam had used the term ‘places.’ As if they _still_ couldn’t count on their own teammates to come to their aid if they needed it. Who else they would contact—be it another organization, or _what_ —she had no idea. Perhaps fully-awake Wanda would have even insisted they still come to _her_ if they were ever in need. Just because she would be going away wouldn’t mean she would stop being their teammate. Or stop being their _friend._

It wouldn’t mean losing her, like they had lost Steve.

But half-asleep Wanda didn’t feel anything. She only readjusted her head on Bucky’s shoulder, and let the repetitive motion of his metal thumb sweeping back and forth along her knee finally soothe her back under the full fog of sleep. 

* * *

The next thing she knew, Wanda was waking up atop a bed. The same bed she had been occupying for the past month, in Sam’s sister’s old room. She had no recollection of when they got home, but she was vaguely aware one of the soldiers had carried her out of the truck and up the stairs (probably Bucky, given how she’d been leaning on him the whole way home).

Now, the tiny red numbers on the nightstand’s clock beside her indicated that it was early morning. Which meant she had slept all through the night since nodding off on the truck ride home. It was pretty surprising to have such a mercifully empty rest after so long of nightmares and fitful sleeping, but it was also a relief, given all the stress and adrenaline of the previous two days.

Wanda sat up with a groan, her body feeling not all hers for a few seconds, after having been asleep so long. She still felt as though she was in some sort of haze as she finally got up and about. At first, she believed that to be the reason why her telepathy didn’t pick up the surface of any of Sam nor Bucky’s thoughts.

However, as she made her way out into the hall and to the top of the staircase, she realized the house was physically quiet as well.

Wanda started down the stairs, suspecting they were engaged in another early morning training session. She was half-bracing herself to find them hissing at each other like stray cats the way they usually did over some matter or another. And, she was also half- _hoping_ they would be. She wanted a little return to normalcy, given how tense she had last seen them. How upset they had been because of _her,_ and the proposal she had been given that she’d taken so long to tell them about. 

As she reached the front door, though, she found they weren’t in the field in front of the house, but rather right there on the porch. They were standing close together, their backs to the windows on either side of the door, almost as if to form a human wall in front of it. If she strained herself, she could pick up traces of their conversation. 

“…the hell are you suggesting here?” came from Bucky.

There was a brief pause, and then Sam shot out something along the lines of, “Get the fuck off my porch.”

It was then Wanda realized they must have been speaking to someone else. Given the lives they led—and the fact that they had _just_ returned from a mission, complete with Sam and Bucky being arrested for their efforts—she knew that someone unexpectedly showing up at their doorstep was not a matter to be taken lightly. Hence, she was tentative about opening the door to join them outside.

“Sam?” she said softly as a way of announcing her arrival. “James? What’s going on?”

Her teammates both immediately stepped aside at the sound of her voice, half-turning to face her. In the process, they revealed the third party they had been telling off. He was an older man, though not quite as old or frail as the police chief they had encountered the day before. Although, he carried a very similar—if not stronger—sense of self-righteousness, and confidence in his authority to protect him from whatever the three Avengers before him may try. 

The two soldiers looked merely surprised to see Wanda there, then almost embarrassed to have been caught the way they were, speaking harshly with the third party there. Bucky opened his mouth to speak, only to clamp it shut with a frustrated glance downward. Wanda vaguely recognized the muffled buzzing at the surface of his mind as the same self-restraint he’d had while arguing with Sam during the drive home. The same restraint he’d exercised when he wanted to let Sam speak during said argument.

Sam’s own mind ticked uneasily, making it clear he knew Bucky was leaving it up to him to explain themselves. Wanda didn’t miss the way Sam’s fists clenched and unclenched at his sides, as if he, too, was restraining himself from something. Judging from the simmering anger in his expression, it was quite possible he was stopping himself from chasing this obviously unwanted stranger off of his family’s property.

“We were just letting this gentleman, here, know we weren’t interested in what he’s selling,” the airman said at last, shooting a distasteful glare at the stranger. With a step closer in said man’s direction, he crossed his arms over his chest and added stiffly, “Maybe you’ll have better luck at the next place, so why don’t you take a nice long walk down over there.”

He tilted his head to the left, where the only ‘next place’ in sight was the shack where Sam’s family used to clean off the fish and crustaceans they caught for their nearby seafood restaurant. By the looks of it, Sam wanted their visitor to take his “long walk” down the short pier that was there.

The stranger merely regarded Sam with a sigh, as if the soldier’s presence there was of nothing but an inconvenience to him. Then his gaze became trained on Wanda. He began to speak as if neither Sam nor Bucky were there, and that blatant disregard for her friends only made Wanda realize why they were so quick to despise him. “Miss Maximoff, my name is Director Hayward. I’m with the Sentient Weapon Observation and Response Division, or SWORD. We haven’t formally met before, but my subordinates and I have been making repetitive efforts to get in contact with you about registering with our organization.”

“Yes,” Wanda replied bluntly. “I know. I’ve heard all the calls, and all the messages.”

“So, you understand the need for urgency?” the director pressed, speaking slowly as if to a young child. “It’s integral to our current program to know whether or not you will be available for use. And if you’ve sent any response on your willingness to participate, we have yet to receive it.”

There were a few beats of pause, wherein no one said anything. Faintly, Wanda thought she could hear something whirring in Bucky’s artificial arm, drawing her eye to the fact that he was now the one clenching his fist on that side in forced physical self-restraint. While Sam’s behavior had been similar, it had surprised her, given the airman’s insistence that no matter what either of them thought, it was still worth respecting that it was Wanda’s decision to go off with SWORD or not. Bucky’s reactions, though, made more sense. Especially given the way the director was speaking to her now, as if she were slow-minded. As if she was an _object_ waiting to be used. Inadvertently furthering a point Bucky had previously made. 

_“They’re addressing her as a weapon. They’re gonna treat her like one.”_

“I have a feeling,” the director went on after a few more seconds of her silently musing, “that some of our programs may be of interest to you. When we spoke yesterday to Chief—”

“You mean grant immunity for the Sokovia Accords?” Wanda cut in. She heard her own voice become bitter, sharper at the notion of the very documents that had been put in place specifically for people like her. To control her.

Admittedly, getting rid of that proverbial leash was the single hold SWORD’s offer had over her. 

“Well…” The director shifted the weight of his feet. “I’m afraid that part of the conversation…there was some miscommunication there. Of course, if we did have the authority to fully revise the Accords all on our own, we would certainly look into it. But as is, the best we can do is allow you exemptions on some of its policies. That is, when they’re for the purpose of our missions.”

Even without the aid of telepathy, Wanda could see the point he was trying to bury under so much jargon. _You’ll be immune when it’s convenient for us._

So much for the only appeal his offer had. 

If this had been a month ago, Wanda would have probably deliberated her decision more earnestly. When the offers had first started, she had just dropped of Bucky to stay with Sam for the foreseeable future, leaving her all alone with the last semblance of a family and home she’d had left being reduced to shambles. With nowhere to go at the time, and a haunting sense of mixed loneliness and emptiness dogging her every step as she tried to figure out what came next, perhaps she would have acquiesced for lack of any other option at all. 

But now…

Wanda was finally pushed to words when she heard the director's mind start clicking at a relentless pace, indicating that he was readying another speech to try to persuade her with. Before he could even finish the thought he was on, she finally gave an answer to his persistent inquiries. “I respect your concerns, director. And the fact that you were willing to travel all the way down from New York to handle this. However, I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline your invitations. You see, I’ve recently come into, um…well, other commitments that I believe are worth my attention more. So, while I will apologize for wasting your time, I have to insist I won’t be joining your program.”

The director looked legitimately dumbfounded that she’d said no. He simply stared at her for several heartbeats, as if waiting to hear her say she didn’t mean it. “Commitments? You mean, with the Avengers? As in continued vigilantism?” 

With a step closer, he pressed further, “Miss Maximoff, I’m afraid I can’t—” 

Before Wanda could even think to react, both Sam and Bucky were stepping forward as well, moving to once again stand close at the other’s side as if to form a human wall. Perhaps if the circumstances were different ( _entirely_ different), Wanda would admire the two for finally, unabashedly standing in solidarity with each other over something. 

“She said no,” Bucky growled. 

A frustrated sigh. “Boys…”

In spite of the two large, broad-shouldered men blocking most of her view, Wanda still caught a glimpse of the director’s hand moving to his hip, pushing aside his suit jacket to show a gun strapped there. He merely pressed his hand against it in warning, but it was enough to make Wanda react.

She started forward, putting one hand against each soldier’s back. It had been mostly for her own comfort, to know that they were currently alright and nothing would happen if she was close enough to shield them with her scarlet. But they apparently took it as a signal to step aside, at least enough to let her squeeze herself in between them. Either way, it worked in their favor, for the director stepped back a few paces, effectively daunted by the sight of three Avengers standing in direct unity against him. For good measure, Wanda flexed the fingers of her right hand, allowing thin wisps of scarlet light to become entangled with them in a threat just as empty as the director’s had been.

“I think your business here is done, man,” Sam stated, his cold tone sounding unnatural coming from him. “Accords or no Accords, this is still private property, and the family that owns this place doesn’t take kindly to trespassers. Big Man like you really want to waste his time and money dealing with a lawsuit like that in between these oh-so-important projects?”

That threat seemed to cut to him more than Wanda’s scarlet or even the soldiers’ matching death glares. He took another step backward, now pointedly avoiding all three Avengers’ gazes. “No. No, there’s no need for that. I can go. Of course, if you want to reconsider our offer, Wanda, we can—”

“Miss Maximoff,” Sam corrected curtly. 

Another impatient sigh. “Miss Maximoff,” he forced out. “If you want to reconsider, I can leave my card with you—”

“No need,” Wanda stated, keeping her voice as neutral as possible. 

“Right…well then.” He shot a last look at Sam and Bucky, clearing his throat awkwardly. 

The plates in Bucky’s artificial arm shifted, which Wanda knew to be his own show of impatience. The director seemed to take that as his final warning. And rightfully so. With one last nod in Wanda’s direction, he turned away to finally leave.

Even when the director had neared his car, Sam and Bucky continued to watch him, as if to ensure he was truly going. Wanda, on the other hand, turned on her heel to head back inside the house, intent on treating the entire exchange as nothing. She was still in the entry hall when she heard the door open and close behind her, followed by the heavy steps of boots following her towards the kitchen. 

“So, any breakfast ideas?” she said over her shoulder. “It’s my turn to cook, yes?”

Sam didn’t even bother trying to go along with her casual front. “Are you OK, kid?”

The deep concern in his voice was enough to stop her in her tracks, turning to properly face him and Bucky where they now stood just a few short paces behind her. “Yeah,” she answered honestly. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Sam shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know…just worried you feel like we made a decision for you, here. After you were considering it for so long—”

“Sam,” she interrupted gently. “It’s OK, I promise. I wasn’t considering it. I was putting it off, because I didn’t care enough to give an answer at all.”

Sam finally relaxed at that, a soft, almost nervous breath leaving him. 

The tension in Bucky’s shoulders also loosened some, although his facial expression was still pinched in apprehension over something. It wasn’t the same dark, chilling disquiet that had plagued his very being ever since hearing about SWORD to begin with, but rather the lighter, more boyish uncertainty that only sometimes crossed his face whenever they were doing something together around the house, or at the grocery store. Something more akin to the normalcy the three of them had started to build there together, which Wanda had begun to miss as soon as it was gone. 

“So…” he asked after just a few heartbeats of hesitation, “What comes next, then?”

Wanda surprised even herself with another honest answer. “I don’t know. But…if it’s alright with the family that owns this property, I was hoping I could stay around here until I figure it out? Maybe earn my keep, helping out with a couple rogue missions.”

Sam smirked a little, no doubt recognizing how his own words were being reused. “Yeah, I don’t see it being a problem,” he said with his arms crossing over his chest again, this time in a show of playful charge over the matter. “Think you can handle staying on standby for a rugged, good-looking soldier and his old man sidekick while they carry out their unauthorized investigation?”

Bucky’s face twisted into an expression of pure indignation, glaring at the man beside him at the words “old man sidekick.” Sam pretended not to notice, although his slowly growing grin indicated otherwise.

Wanda laughed a little, her chest feeling genuinely, mercifully, lighter now that things between them had made a clear shift back to normal. Or at least, as normal as they could be for two soldiers and a witch living under the same roof, trying to find their way after coming back from the dead.

She answered Sam’s question with a small smirk of her own. “When do we start, Captain?”


End file.
